Cookie sales soar as Girl Scouts adopt smart phones, credit cards

Few things can derail a Girl Scout cookie sale quite like the words, "I don't have any cash."

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.

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.

"Now, when people say that they don't have any cash on them, the girls say with big smiles, 'We take Master Card and Visa,' " he says. "Everyone is pleasantly surprised that Girl Scouts have this technology. It's easier and more convenient. People are just more enthusiastic about the sale."

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.

Sage and Square both work through plastic dongles that plug into the headphone jack of iPhones, iPads, and many Android smart phones. Customers swipe their cards through the small device, then sign their name on the phone's touch screen. Receipts arrive via e-mail.

Smart phones send the transaction to Square, Sage, or one of the other mobile-payment firms, which passes it along to the credit-card company, keeps 1 to 3 percent of the sale for itself, and deposits the remainder of the money into the seller's bank account. Debit cards work, too. The phones do not retain any card numbers and, according to the companies, come with multiple layers of security and encryption to minimize fraud.

Before these phone-based options existed, Girl Scouts experimented with dedicated card readers. The results were not inspiring.

"They were very slow, and it became a hassle to carry them around from one place to another," says Amanda Hamaker, manager of product sales for Girl Scouts of the USA. "The trend we saw is that people would try them for about a year and then say it's not worth it."

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