Growing Trend of Mobile Payments in the Restaurant Business

Are you a budding restaurant-based entrepreneur or wish to be the done in the coming time? The great news is that the restaurant business is thriving at a fast pace like never before. It has been estimated that more than 60% of the working professionals order food from the restaurant or go for in-room dining at least once a week. Not just this only, there would be a 30.55% increase in the restaurant business model by the end of 2024.

Starting a mobile app for the restaurant is another rising trend in the industry giving rise to online orders, double the rate of deliveries, and increase rush at the dining area inside restaurants. According to the report of Statista, 55% of people use restaurant mobile apps to view menu and pricing options. Whereas, 38.2% of users constantly lookout for food delivery deals and discounts. Additionally, 30% of users order the food online and 23.3% make reservations.

The above statistics show the increasing penetration of restaurant mobile app development in the hospitality business. More and more restaurant owners have completely revamped their operations not just confined to the traditional model only. But also online food of making reservations, order food and make payments digitally.

There has been an increasing diversification of digital payment methods adopted by restaurant owners. Be it like a credit card, debit card, or cash, these payment methods are universal across the industry. Highly developed restaurant owners count much on new-age payment methods via Google Pay, Samsung Pay, and other app-based modes.

Undoubtedly, mobile payments are changing the restaurant business to much extent. And, you need to invest in mobile app development services to enable the latest means of receiving payments via apps on a real-time basis.

So, in this blog, we will discuss the importance of cashless mobile payments for restaurant owners and witness an increase in profit. Also, we will state here reasons to adopt mobile payments for delivering food online or offline.

What is Mobile Payment Method for a Restaurant Business?

Mobile payment better known as Mobile Point of Sale (POS) is a technically-enabled system for the restaurant industry to receive cashless payments. Customers use a smartphone or tablet to add money to their wallets and make payments to a particular restaurant in a hassle-free manner. In general, the MPOS model accepts payments via debit card, credit card, & wallet payments according to the following:

* Debit & credit cards having EVM chips

* Contactless credit cards

* Digital wallet payment methods like Google Pay, Paytm, Phone Pay, and more

* Samsung Pay that uses magnetic secure transmissions (MST) for Samsung device users only

* QR codes payment method

Mobile Point of Sales is different from the traditional POS model of the restaurant. It saves time to make payment of the food ordered in a contactless manner. It is best for the restaurant industry to widely adopt MPOS payment systems to stay at a great distance during the pandemic time, offer convenience to customers, and scale up business operations.

Problems Faced by Traditional Restaurants

Payment-related challenges are not now. Four out of five restaurant owners face a lot of challenges related to receiving payments from customers in the following manner:

* Unknown Cash Flow: Dealing with cash transactions at the restaurant or  food delivery might cost you something. Sometimes you do not know the flow of cash. It happens while making deliveries in different directions and manually recording the same. Proper monitoring of payments is important to know the real source.

* High Expenses: Traditional point of sale methods is always an expensive affair to manage without a professional accountant. There has to be a responsible person recording all the transactions on the very same to avoid confusion. Restaurant businesses that still rely on traditional payment models have to face acute financial hardships by encountering high operating costs.

* Payroll for Tipped Employees: Managing the best servers at the restaurants is often a difficult job. For this, you have to manage the front-end and back-end payments of resources regularly. Some of your best employees might work on an hourly, weekly, monthly, or permanent basis. Even some receive a lot of tips from customers that are difficult to manage without a record. As a result, your restaurant faces the challenge of taking into account all the cash flow.

Top Reasons Why you Need Mobile App Payment Methods

Are you still in a dilemma about whether to invest in restaurant mobile app development services for introducing digital payment methods? Then have a look at the following few reasons to clarify your doubts.

1. Make Reservations Quickly

By introducing mobile app payment methods, you will increase the restaurant table reservations rate by 15%. You have witnessed a group of guests arriving at your restaurant and split the food bill by demanding split bills. Practically, it is time-consuming for the restaurant to print multiple bills of one amount. Not just this only, customers also demand multiple swiping of credit cards to further split the bill. This tends to slow down the server system and make further delays in giving the table to the next set of customers. The only solution lies in enabling mobile payments. Customers can pay online and later share the bill by receiving money digitally. As a result, outside customers need not wait too long to grab the inside and experience less time in settling the bill online. All this helps restaurants providing an enriched level of hospitality experience to food lovers without letting them wait for too long.

2. Because your Customers Prefer it

Most people do not prefer to carry much cash and credit/debit cards in their wallets, especially in urban areas. They rely more on digital wallet payments for buying groceries, booking a cab, sending payments, and more. Concerning the restaurant business, the digital payment method allows customers to hop in the restaurant area, eat the desired meal, pay online, and leave in no time. Cashless payments at the restaurants do save a great deal of time and effort for customers to settle the bill in the shortest possible time.

3. Get Real-Time Data

Mobile payments provide real-time data insights to a restaurateur. Restaurant owners can have a look at information like how many tables are reserved and how many are left, how much money has come in for day & night, what is the ratio of online orders, and more. The real-data helps restaurant owners to see issues, complaints, and feedback. It further helps to work on the loopholes and make food service much better. All the more important thing is taking care of digital payments and see who how many customers faced a little delay in that too.

4. Safety of Credit/Debit Cards

Credit/debit card payments appear to with the most common issue of losing the card at the restaurant area. A majority of customers at the restaurant leave their cards after making the payment and face a great deal of financial loss. To prevent the same, mobile payment offers the convenience of the cashless way of settling the bill using a smartphone.

The above-reasons clarify the fact that digital payment is the new and futuristic approach for restaurant owners to reduce reservation time, increase brand loyalty, and meet customers’ expectations at large.

Benefits of Mobile App Payment Options

The technology disruption has turned a smartphone into a credit card for users to make payments effortlessly. Especially at restaurants, cashless is the new of paying the food bill that offers the below-mentioned benefits to the industry:

1. Meet On-Demand Food Delivery

Earlier dine-in was the only option for restaurants to occupy customers inside. With the onslaught of the pandemic, dine-option has taken a little step back. Businesses are adopting an online-food delivery model to make substantial sales. Now, the situation is quite normal these days still, restaurants can count on online delivery options to boost sales. And, cashless payment is the ideal way to receive money for the ordered food. You can even take the examples of food giants like Grubhub, UberEats, DoorDash, and several others.

2. Reserve Table on the Go

Now, people have the convenience of booking a table at their favoured restaurant by tapping on the mobile app. The reservation feature eases the burden of customers to prevent waiting outside the restaurant for their turn. It helps professionals and business-minded people to reserve a table for urgent meetings at any hour of the day with ease. Also, contactless payment brings innovation and safety precaution inside.

3. Fast Payment Processing

Digital payment methods have helped restaurants decreasing dependency on collecting invoices, analyzing the data, and backlogs. Mobile payment allows restaurants to save the environment. It helps to restrict the use of paper for making physical bills and reduce operational costs as well.

4. Send Push Notifications

By using a robust restaurant mobile app, you can win over customers by sending personalized notifications on their personal devices. Send notifications related to Happy Hours discounts, deals, cash back, and major updates. It also helps restaurant owners to notify any new dish being implemented in the menu or festive delicacies to receive more and more orders.

5. Enhanced Safety

Safety and hygiene are the biggest concerns of restaurants. In today’s time of contactless dining, mobile payments pave the way for increasing online orders at ease. It helps to curb the issue of preventing bacteria and viruses outside the dining area. Money mobile solution also helps restaurants to maintain food stock by ordering online and pay digitally.

6. Enable Mobile Wallet

Mobile wallet is the rising revolution in the realm of cashless payment. It allows customers to directly pay using a smartphone instead of digging their physical wallets. The increasing integration of mobile wallets allows people to pay via different mediums like credit cards, debit cards, QR codes, and much more.

7. Power of Wearable Technology

Smart watch is the new revolution in the restaurant business that allows professionals to receive and manage orders via wrist device only. It maintains a smooth flow of orders and also allows restaurants to send promotional messages to customers. The increasing integration of smartwatches enables the staff to manage orders, allow check-in and check-out to customers, and make the whole process goes easy and flexible.

8. Loyalty Integration

The mobile app payment integrates the fruitful efforts of increasing the brand loyalty of existing customers. It boosts the restaurant’s customer retention by offering multiple tactics like games, reward points, competitions, and more. People will participate more and more while accessing the restaurant app and win great prizes or discounts to stay with you for a long.

Best Examples of Mobile Payments at Different Types of Restaurants 

* Fast Food Restaurants: Popular fast food hubs like Dunkin Donuts, McDonald’s, Johnny Rockets, etc have implemented the feature of fingerprint Touch ID at the near-field communication. This allows customers to touch their smartphone to the terminal to make quick food payments.

* Full-Service Restaurants: You must have witnessed tabletop Kiosks at grocery and clothing stores. It allows you to scan your pick-ups and make payments digitally. The same concept has been adopted by giant restaurant chains like Applebee, Olive Garden, and Panera. It allows customers to place an order and make payment using Kiosk and without needing a service professional at the restaurant.

* Fast Casual Restaurants: All-day-long running restaurants have adopted the fast and secured payment option of a mobile app. It allows customers to order food from the app menu and make payments seamlessly.

Wrapping Up

Mobile payments are adding a layer of convenience to restaurants. Customers find this seamless way of making payments digitally along with ordering food online, make reservations, and secure credit/debit card details. Restaurants of all types can make the most out of mobile app development services to ease off the payment burden and fasten up the process. If you need to build a result-oriented restaurant app or add a digital payment feature, then get in touch with the Android Developer Company.

Summary

Online mobile payment is changing the likelihood of the restaurant business. Transform the way of receiving orders, payments, and suggestions via the restaurant mobile app. Also, bring optimum convenience to customers paying the food bill via mobile wallet, credit card, and other cashless modes of payment. The leading mobile app development company Android Developer is available to build interactive Android mobile apps for the restaurant industry.