Restaurant payment: streamlining the process

The payment stage is a mandatory step for both customers and restaurant owners. Although this action may seem trivial, it can also be a source of frustration for both parties. Smoothing the restaurant payment process is one of the biggest challenges in the restaurant industry, which has to deal with slowing down elements such as bill sharing and other time-consuming elements for servers. It is therefore natural that Fintechs have looked into the subject in order to propose relevant solutions to accelerate and optimize the cash flow in restaurants.

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The constraints of restaurant payment

We have all experienced situations where we waited longer than necessary in a restaurant when paying the bill.

Let’s imagine for example a table of 8 people, who at the time of the cashing up wish to pay separately and on top of that by using different means of payment. One with a credit card, the other with a meal ticket or in cash… The process of cashing up this kind of group can quickly be long and slow down the activity of the restaurant, especially during busy periods.

It is this type of observation that has encouraged the emergence of innovative solutions with the ambition to improve the situation. Fintechs have been looking into the issue and are starting to propose principles that have the potential to profoundly change restaurant cashiering.

Improve fluidity

Sunday is a payment solution developed for the French restaurant chain Big Mamma. Thanks to a 20 million euros fundraising, their idea to propose a payment solution by QR code has become a reality.

This solution aims to make the payment of the bill extremely fluid and fast. Using the now mastered technology of QR code scanning, Sunday provides customers with one of these QR codes, directly on their table. Thus, instead of being dependent on the waiter and his availability, Big Mamma’s customers will be able to pay in a completely autonomous way by scanning the QR Code on their table with their smartphones. Estimated at 15 minutes per table, the time saving of the solution is considerable especially when taken on a day scale or more. The solution satisfies both parties: customers can pay for their meal directly without waiting for a waiter or waiting in line at the counter, and restaurant owners see the turnover in their store greatly fluidified.

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In delivery, a mobile payment

The global pandemic has accelerated a strong trend in the restaurant industry: delivery and click and collect. With behemoths like Uber Eats or Deliveroo in France, many restaurant owners have tried this principle. One of the challenges of home delivery is to offer payment methods adapted to these various situations that involve mobility.

The solution found to meet this challenge is to offer the customer a multi-channel payment. In other words, the objective is to offer as many payment methods and vectors as possible, and to personalize them as much as possible, so that each customer can find a method that suits them.

With the global recovery of the restaurant business, albeit still incomplete, the question of optimizing cashiering is all the more relevant. There is still a lot of room for improvement in this sector, which needs to change its habits to adapt to the new ways of doing business in 2021. The influence of digital technology is once again enormous and has enabled the appearance of solutions that have the potential to revolutionize restaurant cashiering.