Though perhaps there is no greater rivalry than Thin Mints versus Samoas, two groups of the Girl Scouts are taking sides in a different debate: which mobile card reader is best for cookie sales.
On Wednesday, the Girl Scouts of North East Ohio said they would use Intuit Inc.'s GoPayment device, and Girl Scouts San Diego said they would use Mophie Inc.'s marketplace reader.
Both devices clip on to a user's smartphone to let card data be swiped and then transmitted with the phone's existing data plan. Both use Intuit's software to process payments. (Intuit and Mophie announced a partnership in August.)
Marianne Love, the director of business services for the North East Ohio scouts, said in a press release that the Intuit card readers would help sales to a clientele that increasingly favors card payments.
"We've lost out on sales in the past because many potential cookie customers did not carry cash," Love said.
In another press release, Shelley Shinohara, a scout in Troop 3099 in San Diego, said, "While I don't have a credit card or an iPhone, I see my parents using both on a daily basis and am really excited to learn more about them."
Intuit said it gave the North East Ohio scouts free readers and reduced its transaction fees for them. It said it is making the same offer to other Girl Scout groups. Mophie said the five or 10 troops in San Diego with which it is working got free readers and are not being charged for transactions.
Aaron McPherson, a research manager for payments at the Framingham, Mass., research firm IDC Financial Insights, said in an interview that the Girl Scouts, despite their national reach, are a good example for small businesses of how mobile card acceptance devices can be useful.
"It will make [mobile card acceptance] a more popular choice for small businesses or organizations," he said. After the Girl Scouts, "I can see the Salvation Army Santa having a little swiper," he said.
McPherson, who said he was expecting a delivery Wednesday of Thin Mints, Samoas and shortbread cookies, said the Girl Scout partnerships are a further sign of the heightened competition among providers of card readers that attach to smartphones.
Last week, Intuit announced that it was extending a promotional pricing option that lets merchants take payments without paying a monthly fee. For higher-volume merchants, Intuit offers the option of paying a $12.95 monthly fee, plus a smaller percentage of each transaction.
Square Inc., which offers a rival card reader, said this week that it is dropping its 15-cent base fee for card-present transactions.
