18-06-2020 13:20

Flower power – Open Banking help Majblomman track donations in real time

Majblomman is a well-known Swedish charity that raises money with the annual sale of special paper flower pins. When Majblomman implemented a fully digital campaign, Nordea’s Open Banking team enabled a real time overview of all incoming donations.

One of the world’s oldest children’s charities, Majblomman began in Sweden in 1907 with the goal of creating a way for children to help other children. Each year, children around the country have traditionally been out and about selling paper ‘mayflowers’ (majblomma in Swedish) at events such as their local Valborg bonfire and May 1^st parade to raise funds to support activities that help disadvantaged children.

Swish for everyone

This year, in response to social gathering restrictions, Majblomman opted to introduce a fully digital campaign. This meant children were asked to collect funds as part of a group, school or local club by selling digital majblomma. By providing Swish as the real time payment method and Nordea’s Instant Reporting service to connect real time transaction information directly into Majblomman’s platforms, Nordea was able to help Majblomman create a fully digital user experience.

Maria Dalin, Global Cash Management Consultant, CM Sales at Nordea, says: “Majblomman wanted to be able to track the collections of each group and be able to show them an up to date amount of how much they have collected. This meant in order to be able to support Majblomman’s preferred digital journey Nordea needed to open up and give them direct access to allow their systems to talk directly to ours.”

In order to be able to support Majblomman’s preferred digital journey Nordea needed to open up and give them direct access to allow their systems to talk directly to ours.
Maria Dalin, Global Cash Management Consultant, CM Sales at Nordea

For the Swish collections, separate QR codes were created in order to give each group their own specific collection reference. The QR code can be shared digitally in social media or sent to friends and family, giving the children the chance to sell digital majblomma. By opening the Swish app and scanning the QR code or clicking directly to pay in the mobile web browser, donations can be made simply and efficiently.

Staying up to date in real time

With the Swish solution implemented, it was now up to Nordea’s Open Banking team to find a way of creating an overview of how much each group, school or local club was collecting.

Maria adds: “We were able to provide a smooth payment solution to handle real time payments and with a direct integration to Majblomman’s Nordea account, we were also able to support with instant updates of the amounts being raised. By connecting to Instant Reporting, one of Nordea’s premium API services, Majblomman receive direct updates in their system on the latest incoming payments with the required references. Instead of as previously receiving a file by mail from a user interface and manually uploading that with some errors and limitations, they received the information fully automated into their system.”

Continuous updates throughout the day of all of the Swish payments entering Majblomman’s Nordea account were presented on Majblomman’s user interface at majblomman.se. Anyone collecting for the charity was able to visit the website, refresh their overview and see how their group’s fundraising efforts were going.

The full digital integration that was made possible this year has made a huge difference to Majblomman and our users. The near real time updates of transaction information have been accurate and reliable and an absolute key to engage and trigger the over two thousand user groups who have joined our digital fundraising campaign 2020.
Tove Lindahl Greve, Majblomman General Secretary

Tove Lindahl Greve, Majblomman General Secretary, says: ”The full digital integration that was made possible this year has made a huge difference to Majblomman and our users. The near real time updates of transaction information have been accurate and reliable and an absolute key to engage and trigger the over two thousand user groups who have joined our digital fundraising campaign 2020. The integration has been super smooth and resulted in a reduced administrative workload and an improved overall quality of the 2020 campaign.”

Despite children being prevented from selling flowers physically, the digital campaign raised over 10.6 million SEK for Majblomman. This has proved to be important income in compensating for the overall reduction in fundraising levels for the year.

Tove continues: “It’s been amazing considering we only had three weeks to prepare for a digital only campaign. We’re very impressed by what we’ve seen and everyone’s huge engagement. At the peak of the campaign we had 2,500 group level fundraising campaigns ongoing which is really great. Of course, the year overall has been very difficult for us in terms of the amount we normally collect but it’s still a success considering the circumstances. We’re really hoping to catch up with some of our losses next year by running a combined physical and digital campaign. At the end of the day its been fantastic to see everyone’s involvement. The kids and companies involved have been amazing.”

Next year the plan is to enable each child to be able to follow their individual majblomma sales in a special app and receive funds via their own specific QR code.

Increase user experiences

The new solution has enabled Majblomman to become fully digital and provides the children with an effective way of tracking their own progress and being motivated to reach their fundraising goals. As companies increasingly introduce real time payment solutions, facilitating real time transaction information becomes essential to ensure a seamless user experience.

Now everything is cash free and the children don’t need to make every charity collection face-to-face, the whole process has become more efficient and there is obviously the potential to help raise even more money in the future.”
Ulrika Claesson, Commercial Business Developer in Open banking at Nordea

Tove concludes: “We’ve been so happy with this new digital solution for collecting donations. This is the first time we have tried anything involving Open Banking and everything works exactly the way we planned it. We have been really impressed that everything worked out perfectly and the set-up has been very responsive regarding any queries we might have had. We haven’t experienced any issues since we’ve been up and running and everything related to the technical integration has taken place very smoothly.”

Ulrika Claesson, Commercial Business Developer in Open banking, concludes: “Now everything is cash free and the children don’t need to make every charity collection face-to-face, the whole process has become more efficient and there is obviously the potential to help raise even more money in the future.”

“By packaging two of our solutions together, we have been able to support the whole user journey for Majblomman’s collectors. Swish helps with instant payments and Instant Reporting tracking gives us the whole flow. It’s about understanding the full process of Majblomman’s business and designing real-time solutions to match. We have helped Majblomman manage payments in real time and also manage their end users experience of their service by directly connecting the relevant infrastructure,” adds Ulrika.

Majblomman is a nonprofit organisation with the mission to decrease the impact of child poverty in Sweden. Children in families with a low level of income can apply to Majblomman for financial aid to cover costs such as after school activity fees, winter clothes or sports equipment. Children are eligible for Majblomman grants up until the year they turn 18. Majblomman’s work is financed by thousands of children that sell “majblomman” – a small flower pin – each year in April.

How it works – anyone can setup a charity collection. If you are a company or private person 100% goes to the charity organisation. If you are a club or organisation with children, eg soccer team, school etc, you get 20 % of the flower sales. Children are now able to monitor the collections in real time and to use digital payment schemes.

For more information write to Ulrika at ulrika.claesson [at] nordea.com (ulrika[dot]claesson[at]nordea[dot]com).