The latest institution to reap the benefits of technology is one that’s quite surprising. A catholic church in Australia is at the center of some controversy for introducing some electronic collection plates, which allows people to use their credit cards to make donations.
The new collection plates at St. Mary’s Cathedral look pretty futuristic and they stick out a little, but they accept chip card payments which is a pretty neat feature that’s sure to come in handy. The catch is that the card minimum is $10. The controversy started in September when the Roman Catholic cathedral in Sydney made a post on Facebook showing off the collection plates and discussed how the system worked.
I made an audible OMFG when I saw this shared on Facebook… pic.twitter.com/l7v81Qsa4C
— Dylan Reeve (@DylanReeve) September 23, 2018
The church explained that they were the first church to incorporate the technology, and that multiple $10 payments could be made with different taps of your credit card. The issue that most people had with the technology was the payment minimum, which some claimed to be too high.
The Huffington Post reports that people left a lot of angry comments, prompting the church to delete the post. Users criticized the amount of money that the collection plate charged, claiming that they wouldn’t have a problem is the payment minimum was lower or if they could choose the amount of money they wanted to donate. Other Facebook commenters said they were happy with the addition of the technology, especially in those instances when they had no cash on hand.
