Mobile payment is a huge trend in the restaurant business. Consumers like their phones after all, so enabling them to use those phones to pay for their food seems a no brainer.
Or is it?
“It’s a solution in search of a problem,” said Christopher Sebes, president of payment systems company Heartland Commerce. “It’s not hard to pull out your wallet and swipe a credit card.”
As companies invest millions of dollars in mobile apps and mobile payment technology, it’s important to examine how much potential this capability truly has. And many believe it’s inherently limited, at least for now, because it’s just not that hard to pay with a credit card.
Yet there is only so much space on a phone for an app. Most customers will only use a couple of restaurant company apps, and those apps are for companies they frequent. As such, chains like Starbucks and Domino’s are easy beneficiaries of mobile apps and mobile payment.
“If I’m going to download an app, I have to have a reason to download the app,” Sebes said.
And mobile wallet services haven’t exactly taken off, either, because they’re either not broadly offered or customers don’t always know about them. This is where it gets back to the problem that mobile payments are basically trying to correct.
Because it’s not difficult to pay now, there’s no real need to adopt a simpler solution. And as long as we have physical drivers licenses, there will still be a need to carry an actual wallet.
“It’s still a nascent technology,” Sebes said.
To be sure, this doesn’t mean it won’t take off down the line as consumers — and businesses — grow more accustomed to the idea. “We’ll get there,” said Steve Fredette, cofounder of the point-of-sale system Toast. He noted that it takes years for a system to adopt a new payment format. “In five years, you’ll see the numbers creep up.”
And Fredette added that there is a need for the speed that mobile payment can provide many restaurants. He said that customers at family dining restaurants could download the mobile app so they can pay their bill and avoid the line that can develop at the cashier at the end of the meal.
“An app can improve customer experience and help a restaurant win in their market,” said Chris Comparato, CEO at Toast. “We’re still in the early adopter phase.”
Contact Jonathan Maze at [email protected]
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