Charities Aid Foundation Reviews 

I have used my CAF account for years now. I find it a safe, easy way to make charitable donations with just a few clicks.

I have been using CAF for over 50 years as I do not like being tied to a particular charity in case there is an emergency appeal from one of the several charities that I support and I want to make a donation to that appeal that is 'out of step' from my usual pattern of giving.
Never had any security or other issues with the CAF website.
Website is easy to use, management of funds and donations is fairly clear EXCEPT when more than 1 donation is made within a logged-on session. For some reason the 'funds remaining' message correctly subtracts the first donation to provide an updated total. However, if a second donation is made within the same session the total is NOT updated to indicate the remaining funds: it is frozen as if no second donation has been made. If you want to give a third donation then it creates a situation where you think that you have more funds remaining than you actually have unless you keep your own manual running total!

Makes charity giving much simpler, and provides a useful historical record of which charities I've supported, and when. I also like the facility to give anonymously.
Website could be better-designed - the Favourites giving and the transactions download could be made less frustrating to use.

Easy to use and straightforward website allowing me to make quick charity donations, especially in response to emergency appeals

Well organised and trusted support.I have used CAF for many years. The site is well organised and makes donating as easy as possible with minimum fees

I’ve been using CAF to put aside money for charitable giving. I love the way the tax is reclaimed allowing me more money to give. It is a very reliable platform which now, of course, is entirely digital although I remember cheques from when I first started.

You can give to as ll sorts of charities, great and small.

Aldo I like the way that you can set up regular gifts to your chosen charities. It’s a great way of making your giving something that happens regularly.

Easy to use, good way of making charitable donations, have been using it for years.

Very helpful in supporting my charitable issues

Good online portal and account management system. Easy to use. Could improve year end reporting to provide summaries of donations made, credits applied and gift aid status. Withdrawal of charity voucher not welcome as in some circumstances, I prefer to use this method of donating in response to mailing appeals

approval matrix! What is that? you will find out because you will have to set up yourself and they won't even let you know that you have to.

changing ASAP.

The banking app is really clunky and very difficult to navigate. So old fashioned.

log in code arrived 8hours after request!
called the main helpline half an hour on hold, eventually getting to position 1 in the queue only to have the call cut off.

So business as usual at CAF Bank.

PLEASE, please sort out the beneficiary search function. It doesn't work most of the time, and then you have to scroll manually through a list of hundreds of beneficiaries which aren't listed in alphabetical order, with no way to sort them. And then when you do eventually find a beneficiary to update their bank details, you discover you can't. So you have to go through the whole search palaver again to delete them and add a new beneficiary. The system is so clunky and frustrating, even so many months after the "upgrade". I dread doing the weekly payments.

Diabolical. The new portal was a disgrace. Customer service non existent. Have requested a bulk payment was deleted for almost a year and the bank unable to do so despite constant promises that it was being resolved. As a result almost 30 THOUSAND POUNDS left our charity account without authorisation. Your funding is not safe and they should not be regulated. The response, to contact everyone who received payment and ask for it back. Incompetent, dangerous banking. Do not consider opening an account with them unless you are happy to have no control over your own banking and are happy to use funding to pay staff to constantly contact CAFBANK rather than make a difference to the community.

I went to put money on my CAF account. At which point I discovered that they had suspended the account because I had not used it recently. Fair enough. But, I asked, would it not be more sensible to send an email to the customer telling them that their account is about to be disabled, rather than waiting for them to try and transact and hit a problem. Apparently that would be too difficult or too much work - so the computer can be programmed to suspend my account but not to send out an email! I don't think I will be adding any money to my account

Truly abysmal customer service. I can only guess that there is only 1 person staffing the line at any one point. I was number 1 in a queue for over 30 minutes. I have waited for a call back before but always took ages. Theoretically, CAF is a great idea. Practically - dreadful. And that is before we even get onto the disaster that was the tech update.

It is hard to think of anything about CAF that isn't a disaster. The online portal makes online banking so much harder than it needs to be. The recent upgrade was anything but. There are only about two people in the customer service team who seem to have any idea what's going on. I struggle to understand how they are still in business. I would strongly advise anyone thinking about opening an account with CAF to think again. Banking with CAF is probably the worst decision our charity ever made. Trying to extract yourself from one bank in order to move to another is more complicated than you think (and I expect CAF trade on this sadly). But, move we will and I can't wait to bank with a company which has systems that are fit for purpose and staff who are properly trained.

Trying to set up new account. Was sent full details of how to login for the first time. Didn't work. And of course help desk goes home at 5pm will try to call tomorrow but seeing the reviews here I don't hold out much help. Ombudsman next call.

Now expecting the standard cut and past answer from CAF.

Would give zero stars if possible:

-Like lots in the charity sector we suffered through their “upgrade” - couldn’t pay staff or suppliers for several days, non-existent customer service, all signatories locked out of internet banking.
-Were promised proper compensation by staff who subsequently vanished and we never got it.
-Complaints were simply ignored.
-Eventually managed to get into online banking, only to find notification of payments that had been set up were so delayed that the payments were cancelled.
-Unable to set up new signatories despite providing all required information, and three calls with customer service were unable to resolve.
-Three emails to our account manager went unanswered so the question of new signatories remains unresolved.

I used to be a fan of CAF Bank, but their new online platform brings absolutely no benefits, causes tangible problems for customers, and is an example of exactly how not to manage such a transition. I will never use them again.

The laughably touted banking portal 'upgrade' happened in early June 2025 and still today, almost 10 months later, the serious flaws in this totally inadequate system have not been fixed. Basic, fundamental, flaws still remain: only 30 transactions visible, search function is useless, bulk payments keep crashing. Come one guys - sort this mess out please.