Smart Cookies: Girl Scouts Take Mobile Payments for Door-to-Door Sales
The Girl Scouts have been embroiled in controversy over its cost-cutting measures and deceptive food health labels, but the organization may have found a way to make you buy cookies again: mobile payments. One chapter of 40,000 members, the Girl Scouts of North East Ohio (GSNEO), is trying Intuit's (INTU) GoPayment program to boost door-to-door cookie sales. It's a move the national organization should adopt, especially since America's shift from cash to credit have made door-to-door sales more difficult than ever.
Fewer people are carrying cash
Americans have become more dependent on debit cards as they've gained wider acceptance by merchants. When a Girl Scout visits, it's far less likely than it used to be that a prospective customer will have cash on hand.
Shifting to mobile payments eliminates any missed opportunities. It also eliminates the best excuse a potential customer could have: "Sorry, I don't have any cash right now."
People spend more with credit cards than cash
Equally important to the cash-strapped Girl Scouts, people tend to purchase more when they use their credit cards instead of cash. A recent Psychology Today article gave a few key reasons:
- You don't see the actual money
- You pay less attention to the price
- You are not completely aware of how much has been spent until the bill comes later
Photo courtesy of Kurt Magoon // CC 2.0
Related: