Loop Safe Charge
Helping people stay connected when they need their phone most.
Safe Charge is Loop’s late-night connectivity network. Pick up a portable power bank at a participating venue, take it with you, and return it at any Loop station in the network.
It runs on the charging network Loop already operates in Swansea and Cardiff, in 24 venues today. It is open to everyone using the night-time economy, not only students.
If your phone has already died
Phone dead? Ask at the bar.
Renting normally means opening the Loop app and scanning the station, which is no help at all once a phone is flat. So there is a second route. Ask a member of staff at a participating venue, they contact us, and we release a power bank remotely, free of charge.
Ask at the bar
Tell a member of staff your phone is dead. They know what Safe Charge is and what to do.
Staff contact Loop
No payment is taken at the bar and staff never handle the power banks or your card.
We release a power bank
It comes out of the station in the venue, at no charge. Return it at any Loop station in the network.
Emergency releases are free. Ordinary rentals are charged as normal, and you can see those rates on the pricing page.
If there is nobody free behind the bar, ring us on 07542 706614 and we can release one remotely.
Being straight about the limits: this depends on the venue being open and having a station with stock in it. In an emergency, call 999.
The problem
A flat phone takes a lot with it.
Most of what people rely on at the end of a night out now lives on a phone. When the battery goes, all of it goes at once, and usually at the point in the evening it is needed most.
- Calling or messaging the people you came out with
- Booking a taxi or checking the last train or bus
- Maps, and knowing which way you are walking
- Digital tickets, banking and contactless payment
- Reaching the services and schemes already there to help
This is not a problem Loop invented
Phone charging is already treated as a welfare provision in the South Wales night-time economy. The two best known safety points in Cardiff and Swansea both hand out phone chargers, alongside first aid and water.
The Cardiff Safety Buses patrol the city centre and carry First Aid kits, phone chargers and water.
Source: South Wales Police
At the Swansea Help Point, visitors can access mobile phone chargers and water alongside First Aid treatment.
Source: South Wales Police
Those are fixed points that somebody has to reach and be well enough to find. Loop is the same idea distributed differently: a charged power bank in the venue people are already standing in, which they can take with them when they leave.
Where Loop fits
The connectivity layer, and nothing more than that.
Cardiff and Swansea already have well established night-time safety work, run by people who have been doing it for years and do it properly. Loop is not trying to join that list, compete with it, or claim any part of it.
What Loop can genuinely own is narrow and practical. Almost every one of those schemes works better when the person in front of it still has a working phone, and several of them already carry chargers for exactly that reason. Loop runs the charging network. That is the whole of the offer.
Already in the city
- The Cardiff Safety Bus and the Swansea Help Point
- Safe Places, Ask for Angela and the Women’s Safety Charter
- Street pastors, taxi marshals and door staff
- Students’ union and university safety campaigns
- Purple Flag accreditation and licensing partnerships
What Safe Charge adds
- Charging that moves with the person rather than staying in one place
- Stations in venues people are already inside, open when the venue is open
- Pick up in one venue, return in another, anywhere on the network
- A route to a power bank when the phone is already flat
- Screen time in every participating venue for existing safety messaging
Loop is a commercial business and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or operated in partnership with any of the schemes named above. We list them because they already do this work well, and because Safe Charge is designed to sit alongside them rather than duplicate them.
The normal way
Most of the time, it is just a rental.
Safe Charge is not a separate product or a separate machine. It is the ordinary Loop network, used at the point in the evening it matters most.
Step 1
Download the Loop app, free on iPhone and Android.
Step 2
Find a participating venue on the map and scan the station.
Step 3
Take a charged power bank with you. Cables are built in.
Step 4
Return it at any Loop station. Charging stops when it docks.
For venues
Joining adds nothing to your staff’s job.
A Safe Charge venue is a Loop venue. Same free station, same install, same revenue share, same monthly rolling agreement. The only thing that changes is that your team knows what to do when somebody says their phone is dead.
What your team does
- Knows the phrase “Phone dead? Ask at the bar”
- Contacts us when somebody asks
What your team never does
- Take payments or handle anybody’s card
- Lend out cables, plugs or the venue’s own chargers
- Hold, charge or hand back power banks
- Make a judgement about whether somebody is safe
- Keep records, chase returns or deal with faults
For organisations
If you already work on getting people home.
Business improvement districts, councils, students’ unions, universities, licensing teams, police and safety partnerships. We are not asking you to fund anything, endorse anything or put your name to anything.
What we can offer
- Screen time on every participating station for your safety messaging, at no cost
- Your input on which parts of the city are worth covering next
- The live venue list, so you know exactly where charging exists
- A named person to call when something goes wrong, not a support queue
What we are asking for
A conversation, and honest feedback on whether this is useful. If it is, the practical next step is usually agreeing what messaging goes on the screens and which venues matter most to you.
Coverage
Where the network is today.
Real venues you can walk into. We would rather show a short honest list than a map of intentions.
Swansea: 9 venues live
- Dosa Bar
- Velvet Green
- The Perch
- Olivers
- Mille Foglie
- Coach House
- Three Sisters
- Vape X
- The Swansea Jack
Cardiff: 15 venues live
- Paradise Garden
- The Royal George
- Metchy's Cafe & Bar
- The Cambrian Tap
- Blue Bell
- Brewhouse
- Daffodil
- Retro
- The Cricketers
- The Discovery
- The Dock
- The Philharmonic
- Elevens Bar & Grill
- Duke of Wellington
- The Welsh House
This list is correct at the time of writing. We add venues and remove ones that are not working, so it moves. The app map is always current.
Our role
What Loop is for.
Safe Charge does one thing, and tries to do it well. It helps people hold on to a working phone, and with it the friends, family, maps, taxis and services they rely on while they are out at night.
It works alongside the welfare and safety provision already running in Cardiff and Swansea, and is not intended to replace any of it. Those teams do work Loop is not equipped to do. What Loop can do is keep the phone in somebody’s pocket working, so that the help already out there is still reachable.
We are careful about how we put this, because safety is not a place for marketing. Loop rents power banks. Safe Charge is not an emergency service and it is not staffed as one, and we cannot guarantee anyone’s personal safety. In an emergency, call 999.
Talk to Pete
You will be dealing with the person who installs the machines.
Loop is a small South Wales business. If Safe Charge is useful to what you already do, say so, and if it is not, say that instead. Both are worth knowing.