Safeway trades loyalty points for Kosovan aid

Safeway has adapted its loyalty card scheme to allow customers to donate their shopping points to help buy food for Kosovan refugees.

Safeway says it has been inundated with requests from shoppers keen to donate the points gained on their ABC loyalty cards. One point is earned for every 1 spent.

More than 13 million points have been donated over the past two weeks, which Safeway has pledged to exchange for goods such as food and hygiene supplies. These will be given to aid agency Unicef to ship to refugee camps in Macedonia and Albania.

The points scheme is in addition to in-store collections carried out across the UK, with 103,000 raised so far. The majority of supermarket chains have had in-store collections in aid of the crisis.

Unicef spokesman Nigel Fisher says Safeway’s idea is unique. “It’s a bonus to have this as well as money from in-store collections,” he says.

The company says it is working closely with Unicef and The Express newspaper’s emergency appeal to help refugees.

None of the other supermarket chains are believed to be setting up a similar scheme.

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