Girl Scouts Now Accepting Credit Cards For Cookies

In the Los Angeles Country area, local Girl Scout troops will be able to accept credit cards payments for cookie purchases thanks to mobile payment readers plugged into smartphones.

Girl Scout Cookie season is officially underway, and until it draws to a close on March 25 Girl Scouts hawking boxes of America’s favorite cookies in the Los Angeles County area will have the advantage of technology to help them sell their snacks.

“Many customers would love to buy Girl Scout Cookies, but many can only buy one or two boxes because they only have a certain amount of cash on them or they have to walk by the booth entirely because they have none on hand,” said David Corey, Director of Retail and Product Sales for the Girl Scouts, according to the Long Island Beach Post.

2012 is the 100th anniversary year for the youth organization, and to commemorate it a new cookie has been introduced. The Savannah Smiles is a delightful, lemony cookie that was created in homage to the founder of the Girl Scouts, Juliette Gordon Low, a native of Savannah, Georgia.

It also seems only fitting that this year, for the very first time in the area of LA County, local troops will be accepting credit cards at cookie booths via mobile payments. Scouts will use a secure credit card reader that plugs right into a smart phone that will allow them to accept debit and credit cards as payment, email receipts for purchases and even, if need be, issue on-the-spot refunds to customers.

“We have obtained 1,000 of these devices to start for the troops. We hope that this will open up Girl Scout Cookies to new customers, increase the number of boxes per customer from the loyal patrons that come out every year to the booths, and teach the girls about credit cards and the importance of good credit―because Girl Scout Cookies really is financial literacy in action,” said Corey, as reported by the Long Island Beach Post.

The Girl Scouts of America is not the only organization that has opted to embrace the new technology of mobile payments. This past holiday season The Salvation Army has some of its Santas armed with smartphones equipped with card payment readers in order to be able to accept donation from cash-poor do gooders. These tech savvy Santas were available only in select markets such as San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas and New York.