Bell Ringers Go Digital This Season

HOHOHOMERRYCHRISTMAS

Soon, the holiday sounds of coins clinking into red kettles may disappear, replaced by the silence of a credit card swipe.

The Salvation Army has begun shifting into digital donations, as fewer and fewer shoppers carry much change or bills.

This year, the charity is testing the use of Square, a mobile payments start-up that allows anyone to accept credit card payments via mobile devices.

“A lot of people just don’t carry cash any more,” said Maj. George Hood, the Salvation Army’s spokesman. “We’re basically trying to make sure we’re keeping up with our donors and embrace the new technologies they’re embracing.”

The Army, with nearly $2 billion in annual revenue, was the biggest and most visible charity to adopt the technology. Other nonprofit groups and individual fund-raisers have used it too. A Girl Scout troop in Silicon Valley, for instance, used it earlier this year to sell some 400 boxes of cookies at Facebook’s headquarters after the father of one troop member who worked there realized that many of his colleagues did not carry cash, according to Advertising Age.

“Instead of training people on an entirely new behavior, an entirely new way to pay, we just use what they know,” Mr. Dorsey said. “It doesn’t require them to learn anything new and it doesn’t require the merchant or organization to learn anything new.”

Though 800,000 merchants accept $2 billion in payments a year using Square devices, they are mostly small ones like farmstands, hair salons and taxi drivers, and many shoppers have not seen it in action.

The Salvation Army plans to put Square to use at 10 locations each in Dallas, San Francisco, Chicago and New York. Bell ringers will carry Android smartphones donated by Sprint Nextel that are equipped with Square’s postage-stamp-size card reader and two apps, one from Square and one from the Salvation Army. Donors swipe a card, just as they would at any credit card processing terminal, and the money goes into the Salvation Army’s account.

Square, which charges a 2.75 percent fee on every transaction, a majority of which goes to the credit card companies, uses the same security measures as financial institutions and, the company said, has an added level of safety because the payer must be present to make the payment.

reply to post by ICEKOHLD


here we go folks. now...we can't even claim to not have any cash on us. geez...the holiday guilt is never gonna let up!

reply to post by ICEKOHLD


How typical of them. Donations get charged a 2.75% fee on every transaction.

It's okay though, we all might be swiping for transactions with our RFID chips implanted in our hand sometime soon.

reply to post by Corruption Exposed


yeah. i can't wait until i can buy my groceries, pay a speeding ticket and be identified by a satellite miles above me.