This Homeless Man’s Best Friend Is A Smartphone Card Reader

Society is definitely moving in the direction of being cashless, with the proliferation of Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, credit cards and the ilk. A homeless man in Detroit is well aware of that fact, which is why he has changed his “strategy” to obtain cash from the sympathetic public by accepting donations the high tech way – through a smartphone card reader which is capable of processing debit and credit card transactions. I guess there is no way the excuse of “I don’t have cash on hand” can be used with Abe Hagenston now, right?

Abe is also known as “Honest Abe”, where he mentioned that he had already begun to save money for a new pair of prescription glasses. Having spent the last seven years on the streets, Honest Abe currently stays below the 8 Miles overpass on I-75 in Detroit, Michigan. The lack of snow might be welcome to many, but for Abe, he has this to say, “It’s not really that easy, what we’re lacking is snow. Of course, there’s no snow removal. I used to look forward to that, doing some shoveling.”

At least Honest Abe has learnt how to harness the power of Square reader technology in order to aid him in his daily collection routine. Abe takes in VISA, MasterCard, American Express, and chances are he might very well be the only homeless person in the US who receives a credit card, and all transactions are safe and secure via square.com. This is truly thinking out of the box!

Edwin Kee
Categories: General
Tags: square