Shropshire accountant encourages community support for local businesses with ‘Corona Credits’

A Shropshire and Powys accountant is urging businesses to sign up to a ‘corona credits’ scheme to bring hope to the local economy in the form of StampAid. Rob Ellis, the Managing Partner of Welch and Ellis, who is usually based in Willow Street, Oswestry, believes whilst Government support packages will help it is still a devastating time for anyone who has had to shut down a service or retail business – as they have no idea if their customers will return to them, when life gets back to normal post Covid 19 lockdown. Pubs, restaurants, and businesses such as hair and beauty salons have had to shut down on government advice and most are still not sure when and if things will return to normal. Rob, who is now largely working from home in Llanfechain, Powys, said: “I have a client who is a hairdresser and has now been told they can reopen to sell goods but that is a tiny part of her business and she is very worried. “It struck me an advance voucher scheme was something which local people could do in order to support a host of local businesses like hers at this time and it way of customers letting that business know they were staying loyal.” Having started to look into his own scheme, Rob discovered a London firm who already started to offer it and so now he is urging businesses to sign up to StampAid a free service which enables small business customers to purchase goods in advance for redeeming later. StampaAid is a new free service from established loyalty apps provider Stampapp which was set up with independent coffee houses and other food businesses in mind but which can work for a wide variety of business – those who are closed or who have had to limit some of their normal services due to Covid 19. Stampapp CEO Tom Messett, explains: ““Really Stampaid can work for any business, we designed it with our core food and drink partners in mind but we can work with anyone. At stampapp we provide loyalty and click-and-collect apps to everyone from Cafes to Hairdressers to Co-working spaces and hotels. When the lockdown began we knew a lot of these businesses were going to suffer and StampAid is one of the ways in which we tried to help alongside waiving all fees for our smaller clients who had to close.” Tom says although this is a new app which was only launched in March, one coffee house using it has already taken more than £1200 in a week, in advance sales. He said: “This coffee house now knows when they can reopen they have a lot of sales already in the bank and the customers know when they can get back to their weekly commute to work, their coffee has been paid for.” Now Rob is encouraging local businesses to register in StampAid and local people to visit the website and purchase goods in advance which they can redeem at some point in the future. Rob said: “This is a difficult time for everyone but we know in normal times local business does a huge amount to support the community from sponsoring sports team to donating to local charity – so now is a chance for those customers who can afford to give back and support local business.” For further information visit https://stampapp.me/.

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