PhonepayPlus plans to reduce the burden on charities collecting regular donations via text message by reducing the frequency that they have to remind people about opting out.

The body that regulates premium-rate phone services has published a consultation document outlining its intention to reduce how often charities have to remind regular text givers out the ability to cancel their donation from once a month to once every three months.

It also plans to roll out the option for donors to ‘skip’ a month for all charities or agencies acting on behalf of charities.

Initially three charities, Unicef, Save the Children and Toybox, participated in a six-month trial before it was opened up to others in March 2012. By the end of August 2013 14 different shortcodes were raising money for charity under the pilot. 50,000 people have signed up to donate and £600,000 has been raised.

Between September 2012 and now the regulator has received 3 complaints about those involved in the pilot and has resolved these without the need for further intervention from PhonePayPlus.

The consulation document notes that three-quarters of those that signed up to donate regularly still active six months later and that opt-out rates for charitable donation than other forms of text subscription.

PhonepayPlus is accepting responses to the consultation by 12 December 2013.