EasyCard users can now donate money to the Huashan Social Welfare Foundation with a tap of their card.
A machine at MRT Taipei City Hall Station’s Exit 2, decorated with a family of cartoon bears and a large heart, allows commuters on the city’s metro rail system to make NT$50 donations and provides receipts.
SMART, the company that designed the machine’s graphics, said that the bears and heart are a play on the Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) expression, “How considerate.”
As animals are something that people of all generations are drawn to, it added a mouse to the image, among other things, it added.
The foundation said the system would allow commuters to conveniently make donations while passing through the station.
Donations are to go toward helping older people who are mentally or physically challenged, or who are otherwise dependent on others for their everyday needs, with funds paying for the foundation to send staff to older people’s homes to assist them, it said.
“More than 3 million commuters pass through MRT Taipei City Hall Station every month. If only 1 percent of them make donations through the machine, we could help 100 older people for an entire year,” foundation deputy secretary-general Kuo Hui-ming (郭慧明) said.
EasyCard Investment and Holdings Co chairman Kenneth Lin (林向愷) said this is the first time the EasyCard system has been used as a payment method for donations in the MRT system, adding that the company is always happy to work with groups engaged in socially beneficial activities.
Lin said he hopes the relatively small sum and the ability to obtain receipts will attract donations and help society and the foundation.
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