It’s the oldest excuse in the book. You’re coming out of the store after doing some holdiay shopping- and you’d love to put something in the Salvation Army kettle, but you’re out of cash. Excuse no more. The Salvation Army is going high tech.
“We have the first cashless kettle,” says Major Anthony Baso of the Salvation Army.

In at least 12 spots in Dallas, as well as places in LA, Phoenix and Colorado Springs, you can now charge your donation. That’s because there are new mobile credit card swipers attached to some of the old red kettle stands. Don Brock with Securepointe Technologies is the man behind the program for the machines. He says it’s easy. “You punch in the sale, swipe the card. Enter the amount.” Use debit or credit. Donate whatever you’d like. And, handy bonus, you get a receipt for tax time.

The Salvation Army is hoping this will help them raise more critically needed funds for their holiday campaign, not just because it can target new donors, but also because people donating by credit are more apt to give five or ten bucks- as opposed to cash givers who may just give a couple bucks or change in their pocket.

The new machines are a long time coming. Shoppers have been asking for it for a while. Bellringer Michael Alexander says he hears it all the time – “I don’t have change or no one is carrying cash anymore, can we get a credit card machine?” But the Salvation Army had to make sure any system was secure. With these mobile card machines, no information is stored on the machine, so if someone takes off with it, no one is at risk. The information is triple encrypted when it is sent wirelessly.

If all goes well in the test markets, the Salvation Army will roll it out to other places. So far, so good. We were around when Linus Wright tried it out for the first time. Wright says he liked it and would enourage everyone to give it a try. “I can’t think of a better process,” he says.