April 11, 2012
Cookie sales soar as Girl Scouts adopt smart phones, credit cards
Whether hawking Thin Mints outside the local supermarket or selling the brand-new Savannah Smiles at a booth in the mall, Girl Scouts have watched countless potential buyers walk away because the troops could only accept cash or check. The Christian Science Monitor reports.
These days, shoppers increasingly rely on credit or debit cards, says John Graves, chief financial officer for the Girl Scouts of North East Ohio, which oversees 3,500 troops and 40,000 girls. So Mr. Graves turned to Sage Mobile Payments, one of several companies that turn smart phones into card readers.
... That enthusiasm has led to increased sales, not just for the Girl Scouts but also for small businesses nationwide. Mobile-payment companies such as Sage, Square, and Intuit processed billions of dollars in smart-phone credit transactions last year. Square alone is on track to handle $4 billion a year, twice what it expected in October.
Read full article. Photo above: Square's inch-tall card reader plugs into the headphone jack of Androids, iPhones, and iPads, enabling users to transact payments over the Internet. Receipts arrive by e-mail.
Related: - Ohio Girl Scouts accepting mobile payments for cookies
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