For Immediate Release…

Actress, entrepreneur and philanthropist Alyssa Milano has signed on as an advisor for Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s new mobile payment system, Square (www.squareup.com).

Milano was drawn to the venture not only for its innovative concept which will allow virtually anyone to accept credit card payments, but also for the philanthropic side. $.01 from each transaction will be donated to charity.

As with many great inventions, Square was born out of necessity. In February 2009, Jim McKelvey wasn’t able to sell a piece of his glass art because he couldn’t accept a credit card as payment. Even though a majority of payments have moved to plastic cards, accepting payments from cards is still difficult, requiring long applications, expensive hardware, and an overly complex experience. Square was begun to change all of that.

Today the Square team is focused on bringing immediacy, transparency, and approachability to the world of payments: an inherently social interaction each of us participates in daily. They’re starting with a limited beta and rolling out to everyone in early 2010.

Square founder Jack Dorsey explains Milano’s involvement saying, “We added Alyssa to our board of advisors because she has direct and relevant experience in contracts, promotion, distribution, manufacturing, licensing issues, retail, philanthropy, and a deep insight into present and future technologies and social movements around them. Alyssa brings a clarifying presence to everything we do.”

Additionally, Milano has her own clothing and jewelry line, TOUCH by Alyssa Milano. In the Spring of 2007, she partnered with G-III Apparel Group and Major League Baseball to design and distribute a line of juniors’ ladies MLB apparel. The line proved so successful that it was subsequently expanded to the NFL, NBA, NHL, NCAA, Major League Soccer, Minor League Baseball and The Kentucky Derby to make TOUCH available to their fans as well.

However, Milano is perhaps most passionate about her philanthropic work. In recognition of her charitable efforts, Alyssa was invited by UNICEF in 2003 to become a National Ambassador. Her first trip with the organization was to Angola, Africa (May 2004) to see first hand the issues plaguing the newly liberated country. Milano followed that trip with a visit to India in June 2005. She has also worked on UNICEF’s pivotal “Trick or Treat” campaign as an official spokesperson, and has plans to work with UNICEF on numerous projects in the future.

Milano is also the founding ambassador for The Global Network for Neglected Tropical Disease Control (GNNTDC), an alliance of international partnerships based at the Sabin Vaccine Institute in Washington D.C. and formalized by the Clinton Global Initiative to lead the global effort to treat, control and eliminate neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in the world’s poorest countries.

Milano will next be seen in the ABC comedy series “Romantically Challenged” in 2010.