• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, March 2, 2012

I don’t even want to think about how many boxes of Thin Mints, Peanut Butter Patties or those chocolate coconut-ty things I may end up buying now.  But in many areas, those wonderfully yummy Girl Scout cookies will now use m-payment devices to ring up their sales. No more digging into pants pockets to see what change and singles you have in this age of the debit card.

In an agreement with Sage Mobile Payments, 32 Girl Scout Councils in 23 states have signed on to use a credit card reader that attaches to most cell phones in order to charge your card. While it is not quite the consumer-based m-payment solution that mobile wallets one day promise, this simple act of mobilizing a checkout system is improving sales.

Most girl scouts I find are pushing their green boxes outside of drug and grocery stores at strip plazas. But who uses much cash anymore or walks out the door of a grocery store with spare change? And all of these parent guardians and troop leaders have had to manage and reconcile piles of rumpled bills all these many years. With a mobile card-swiper, the purchases are recorded, credited to the right troop account, and kept secure. The Sage system doesn’t store any credit card information on the cell phone to which the reader is attached, the company says.

But the proof is in the eating. Sage claims that in early tests against troops that were not mobilizing payment, sales were up 13% year-over-year compared to flat growth for non-mobilized troops. As the video below demonstrates, a Northeast Ohio group of troops was seeing flat or decreased sales that this helped stem.

Troop leaders say they also see the benefit in teaching the girls how to manage technology that surely will be a part of their everyday lives. In fact, these girls can go door to door and take credit cards.

The model demonstrates how payment can become more fully mobilized long before Google Wallet or ISIS get into consumers' hands. As long as vendors -- even Girl Scouts -- can make payment ubiquitous, then new models for commerce everywhere emerge.

Take a look at the video below for a sense of how this works. Sure, it is a promo for Sage. But how heartwarming is this? If they weren’t so adorable, how do you think they could get away with selling a miniature-sized box of cookies for $3.50? End your week with a smidge of eager youthful entrepreneurial enthusiasm.

I’ll take five boxes of the PB Patties and my wife wants to know if she can subscribe to Thin Mints.