Almost £35m has been raised by charities using a direct debit processing platform that was rolled out by the Charities Aid Foundation last year.

According to a statement released by CAF, the total amount given through the CAF Donate service stands at £34.8m. The statement said that over 2,000 charities are using the payment platform and 100 new charities are signing up every month.  

CAF also said that 88,294 people have set up regular, direct debit donations in the last 12 months, while a further 91,081 individuals have made one-off donations from their bank account to individual charities. The average, one-off donation made via CAF Donate is £89.  

Research conducted by CAF in its UK Giving 2014 report shows that more than £1bn a year is donated to the voluntary sector by direct debit every year.

CAF Donate was launched in June 2014 to help ease the administrative burden of processing both online and offline donations for small to medium-sized charities. CAF also said it would make it easier for charities to take both regular donations and one-off gifts.

It was set up to differentiate itself from other, existing sites such as JustGiving, in that CAF Donate can be run on a charity’s own website, rather than through a third party.

Chris Allwood, senior product development manager at CAF, said:

“People now increasingly use card payments and direct debits as their preferred way of paying for things and giving to good causes.

“While larger charities are well equipped to handle this, thousands of smaller organisations have previously been priced out of being able to accept money in this way through a combination of processing fees and admin costs.

“Prior to its introduction, cashless payments were not an option for most charities. We now want every charity to have the option to receive donations in this way.”