No more excuses -- Girl Scouts now accept credit cards

When Girl Scout cookie season starts up in your neighborhood, those earnest young saleswomen bearing boxes of sweets may be armed with a new secret weapon: a mobile credit-card reader attached to their smartphones.

That’s right people. The Girl Scouts have firmly entered the digital age, and our waistlines may never recover.

Think of the implications: Before, if you saw a tempting table laden with Samoas and Thin Mints outside the grocery store, being low on cash could prevent you from buying a box or two, or five, or 10.

Not anymore.

“Now every time someone says, ‘Oh, I don’t have cash’ or ‘I don’t have a check,’ we’ve got you!” said Kenya Yarbrough, director of Marketing for Girl Scouts Greater L.A.

Thirty-two troops in 23 states have embraced mobile credit-card collecting technology from Sage Payment Solutions. The Girl Scouts worked with the company for a year to tailor the technology to their needs. Now, the girls can snap a card reader into the audio jack of their smartphones (or a parent’s smartphone, or a troop leader’s smartphone), get buyers to sign the touch pad with their finger, and even send an instant receipt via email.

In other future-of-Girl-Scouting news, the Girl Scouts introduced a new and improved cookie-finder app in December that allows the user to find the closest place to buy Girl Scout cookies within a 30-mile radius.

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