Payment services specialist allpay is committing a significant on-going investment into a Credit Union to aid the union’s ambitious expansion plans, and support the financial wellbeing of its local community. allpay is working in partnership with Herefordshire Housing on the project, which has seen both organisations commit staff, support and resource to aid the union’s growth plans that will see it promote its services across four different counties – Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Shropshire.

The Money Box Credit Union currently provides ethical saving options for members, using allpay’s long-standing network partnerships with PayPoint and the Post Office, to allow savers to pay money into their accounts. With nearly 1,000 members, the union also provides a successful payroll deductible employee savings scheme, attracting some of the local area’s biggest companies such as Kingspan, Herefordshire Housing, Herefordshire Council and leisure company, HALO. Central to its expansion is driving membership across businesses, churches and individual savers, and providing low-cost loans and products to tackle financial inclusion.

Tony Killeen, Managing Director of allpay, said: “Financial inclusion was the bedrock on which allpay was built, providing easy, convenient and accessible ways for the unbanked and under-banked to pay their bills. As such, there are huge synergies with Money Box, the customers it serves, and the products it plans to develop. This is an exciting chapter for both organisations and we are committed to making this project a success.”

The UK Government attaches considerable importance to giving people the ability to access financial products, particularly as its plans for Universal Credit will see recipients paid their benefits monthly in arrears and directly into bank accounts.

As such, it has taken a number of important steps to help credit unions, including removing unnecessary restrictions around the legislation governing them, and allocating £38 million to its Credit Union Expansion Project. Money Box was one of 30 credit unions named in the second phase of the expansion project, which has paved the way for its planned expansion.