faces unique challenges in encouraging customers to change the way they pay for food. The current obstacles preventing greater adoption of digital payments in this industry include: TOO MANY STEPS Restaurants with digital payment options often require consumers to take incremental steps in order to place and complete their order such as, needing to set up user accounts and sign-in through secondary logins. These cumbersome processes create unfriendly experiences that discourage consumers from embracing digital payments. ADDITIONAL HARDWARE As the presence of digital payments has developed, so has the need for additional hardware. For example, many payment digital tools require readers, adding a level of inconvenience and cost to restaurant operators. Additionally, they also only work when the restaurant has the guest at the counter, which is not the case with pick-up from curb-side service. As a result, brands with franchisees are often unwilling to mandate hardware because incremental benefit is not immediately felt by the broad group of franchisees. DIFFICULT INTEGRATION Many brands are in a multi-POS eco-system. Each POS has peculiarities to it, which can affect the consumer flow, especially when coupled with loyalty and other components. More importantly however, the cost to integrate and maintain the various systems can be expensive and brands are often left without a clear ROI model, as one is not always available in the short term. INEFFECTIVE PROMOTION OF BENEFITS Restaurant operators also struggle to easily and clearly illustrate the benefits of adapting digital branded technology, sometimes failing to deliver any benefits at all. Pay only technology is tougher to communicate to guests and requires training of staff, many of whom are not long term employees. In addition,
some of these solutions take away from the opportunity to provide personalized service to consumers, something that many branded concepts find important. SO WHAT’S NEW AND WHAT CAN WE EXPECT IN 2016? A unified mobile application that houses all branded elements, but in particular, allows restaurant guests to view their check and pay the bill with one touch as soon as they are ready to leave. CONSUMER BENEFITS The payment process is reduced to one step, pulling up the bill on a mobile phone or tablet (which can be accomplished with beacon technology) and clicking “pay.” Guests will no longer have to wait to flag a server, be issued the check, and have the server take away the form of payment, bring it back, and then take it away again. RESTAURANT BENEFITS Saving time on obtaining payment from consumers will allow restaurants to turn table fasters, getting in another half or full seating out of busy timeframes. The wait staff can then focus on higher value activities like upselling, guest engagement and actual serving. GUEST ENGAGEMENT BENEFITS Not only is the seated guest benefiting from digital payments, so are customers waiting to be seated as they will experience shorter wait times, making them more likely to come back and feel better about the overall restaurant experience. This way, restaurants can provide a real consumer benefit without solely depending on discounts or other margin reducing programs. By creating experiences that deliver harder to come by benefits, like time, the guest has a far better and longer lasting relationship with the brand MARKETING AND OTHER LEADERSHIP BENEFITS Marketing and leadership brand teams can then have access to digital data – how often customers return,
what they buy during each visit and how long they stay – to more effectively understand their guests. This data will help marketing teams in attracting higher value customers by creating programs and opportunities to retain and more deeply engage with customers. This will result in greater odds of increasing wallet share. The above also helps in creating brand messaging and opportunities. By placing pay at the table in a unified application, guests have a one-stop-shop for all things with respect to the brand, including loyalty programs and even check-in and wait list. This enables easy messaging and engagement and while it is easy for the guest to self-identify to the server, technology like beacons can also be used to find the guest with the app preloaded and prompt with the benefit of on the spot payment. Apps like this one can also be agnostic to what form of payment the guest chooses to preselect, no different than what they do today, but with some additional options, as they would be prepopulated. LOOKING AHEAD In 2016, the digital payments industry will evolve beyond an increased number of ways to pay digitally and self-serving models to take transactions. Industry leaders will need to work creatively with developers and brands to understand consumers’ motivations, mindsets, friction points, and advantages in order to craft experiences that change behaviors while remaining cohesive for users.
Payment Quarterly | Q1 2016
37