PARMA, Ohio – The Girl Scouts were selling their cookies the old-fashioned way, pulling a creaky-wheeled red wagon laden with Thin Mints and Samoas down a suburban street. But the affair took a decidedly 21st-century twist when, with a polite smile, one of the girls pulled out a smartphone and inquired: "Would you like to pay with a credit card?"
The girls are among about 200 troops in northeast Ohio who are changing the way Girl Scouts do business. For the first time, the girls are accepting credit cards using a device called GoPayment, a free credit card reader that clips onto smart phones. Girl Scout leaders hope that allowing customers to pay with plastic will drive up cookie sales in a world where carrying cash is rapidly going the way of dial-up Internet. Keeping pace with changing technology is a priority lately for the historic Girl Scouts, an organization that's preparing to celebrate its 100th anniversary next year.
Despite the coolness of this, I have to wonder just how safe it is going to be to have a credit card after this technology becomes widely available. I'm just saying, if an adorable eight-year-old can swipe a credit card we need to establish some safety rules. Actually, the Girl Scouts are actually leading a charge (pun intended) to a new way of doing business. While cash isn't going anywhere soon, businesses can and do refuse to accept cash payments. That means plastic and ways to use it will be developing at rapid speed. Here's hoping the safety risks are caught on the fly.
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