Best Apps For Girl Scouts To Take Payments

Square offers many benefits (most of them are free) for Girl Scout troops taking credit cards and mobile payments, including:

• Fast and easy setup
• Free and low-cost card readers are available
• No monthly fees to use Square
• Accept swipe, chip, tap, and contactless card payments
• Send text and email Square checkout links, and print payment QR codes, so people can pay even if they don’t have a card or mobile payment method with them, and pay online for bulk orders
• Free website builder, so people can order from your troop online, and Girl Scouts can deliver
• Unlimited users on accounts, so a whole troop can work with one account
• Digital signature capture for credit card payments
• Online dashboard to track sales, taxes, payment processing fees, cookie inventory, and more

There are also some Girl Scout councils, such as the Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana, that partner with Square. Through the partnership, the council will pay some or all of the troop’s Square card processing fees.

Square is free to install and use on mobile devices, tablets, and computers. The only fees associated with using Square software to take payments for Girl Scout cookies are the following payment processing fees:

• Card-Present Orders: 2.6% + $0.10 per order (includes swipe, chip, and mobile device order payments)
• Card-Not-Present Orders: 2.9% + $0.30 per order (includes online, text, email, and manually-entered card payments)

Visit Square’s pricing page to find more detailed terms and conditions.

You can technically take card payments without purchasing a Square card reader at all. However, payments taken without a card reader are subject to higher payment processing fees and take longer to complete than paying with a card.

The Square Contactless Chip + Card Reader is only $59, so it’s worth investing in this one-time hardware purchase.

Also, Square’s hardware is light, simple, affordable, and allows you to take all kinds of payments. Girl Scouts of just about any age can take card payments fast with the intuitive checkout process and tap card reader.

The most common complaints from users relate to unstable accounts and frozen funds. This is a trend you will see across all payment service providers (PSPs), so it isn’t something you should see as a bright red flag.

Other users dislike the pay-to-play features (like Marketing and Customer Loyalty) Square offers. An upside to this additional fee structure is that the basic plans stay affordable but have the option to grow with your needs.

Contracts with Square are month-to-month meaning there are no early termination fees or tricky terms to watch out for.

Venmo offers the following features for Girl Scout cookie sales:

• It’s fast, easy, and free to set up a Venmo account
• No credit cards, or credit card readers, are necessary
• Dedicated business profiles are available
• Online and contactless QR code payment methods
• Buyers can pay by looking up your troop’s Venmo username, or you can request payment from them within the Venmo app
• Venmo provides transaction documentation for troops
• Buyers recognize Venmo as a payment method and will be more willing to use it
• No monthly fees to take Girl Scout cookie payments with Venmo

Some Girl Scout troops allow families to sell through their own Venmo account and then transfer those funds to a troop Venmo account. Other troops create a Venmo troop business account and have all troop members sell through this account.

There are no fees to accept payments using an individual (non-business) Venmo account. However, when selling through a personal account, cookie buyers must pay a 3% transaction fee if they use Venmo to pay with a credit card instead of their bank account/debit card.

Venmo Business accounts have to pay a seller transaction fee at a flat rate of 1.9% + $0.10, but buyers will not ever have to pay any fees to make a purchase. Venmo has lower payment processing fees than payment apps like Square, so there are fewer fees your troop needs to absorb.

If your council has approved Venmo for Girl Scout troop cookie sales, be sure to verify how the Scouts’ individual Venmo accounts, as well as the troop’s Venmo account, should be structured.

Venmo requires no hardware. Just print out your payment QR code, or generate your unique QR code on your phone, and allow users to pay this way.

You can also list your Venmo username online and allow cookie buyers to look you up within the Venmo app, and pay for cookies this way.

There are a few drawbacks to using this popular payment app.

The main issue is that buyers have to already have, or are willing to make a Venmo account.

Your best option may be to offer Venmo as a payment method and consider using another service like Square to take physical cards. To get lower payment processing fees, you can steer people toward Venmo if they already have an account.

Like Square, Venmo also receives a good amount of complaints regarding held or frozen transactions. It’s worth noting that a lot of these complaints involve customers who haven’t validated their accounts.

Venmo is well within their rights to hold, freeze, or even reverse transactions if they suspect the terms of service may have been violated.

The Clover Go is a Bluetooth card reader (developed by Clover) that offers the following features:

• Fast and easy setup
• Accept swipe, chip, tap, and contactless card payments
• Online ordering module, so people can order from your troop online, and Girl Scouts can deliver
• Invoicing module, so people can pay ahead for you to deliver later on
• Digital signature capture for credit card payments
• Online dashboard to track sales, taxes, payment processing fees, cookie inventory, and more (depending on plan level)
• Access to Clover apps from Clover App Market (depending on plan level)

Clover Go pricing can be complicated. This is because, unlike Square, you get your own merchant account with Clover devices, and can get special monthly pricing and payment processing fees.

You can get a more “normal” plan directly from Clover, with the following pricing structure:

• Monthly Pricing: $14.95/month
• Card-Present Transaction Payment Processing: 2.6% + $0.10
• Card-Not-Present Transaction Payment Processing: 3.5% + $0.10

If you get your Clover Go card reader and merchant account from one of these best Clover resellers, you could get a better deal on payment processing and lower your overall fees.

At the same time, many Girl Scout troops, including the Girl Scouts of Western Ohio and the Girl Scouts Heart of Central California, have partnerships with Clover to minimize or even eliminate the amount of payment processing fees that troops have to pay.

If your troop has an existing partnership with Clover, or you can negotiate one, it may be worth it to get your Clover Go and merchant services directly from Clover.

Clover pricing can be confusing, so read our complete guide to Clover pricing to make sense of it all before committing.

A Clover Go Bluetooth card reader costs $49 if you purchase from Clover.com.

If you sign a merchant agreement with a Clover seller, you may spend more or less on your Clover Go hardware.

It is worth noting that getting a merchant account can be difficult, and you can run into Clover scams.

Make sure you read and negotiate your merchant agreement before making any long-term commitments.

Digital Cookie offers the following features for cookie sellers:

• Online “digital cookie” website for each Girl Scout
• People can buy cookies from their websites and get cookies shipped to them
• Phone app to accept in-person payments (all credit card info must be manually keyed in)
• Girl Scout troops do not need to pay any payment processing fees with Digital Cookie

Digital Cookie is available as a free app for download on iPhone and Android devices.

There are no payment processing fees, or any fees at all, for Girl Scouts to use this digital payment solution.

Girl Scouts do not need hardware, as credit card numbers are manually keyed in.

However, there are many drawbacks to using Digital Cookie.

Girl Scouts are very limited on the types of payment they can take, and physically typing in card numbers takes so long that people may not be willing to wait. Also, the app itself can glitch. If this happens, you really may lose out on customers.

We recommend using Digital Cookie only if you really want to avoid fees and want to use something specifically made by Girl Scouts of the United States of America.