Dining Goes Digital

Scenario A: Waiter brings dining check to consumer in the traditional “check register.” Consumer pulls out credit card, puts it in the register, hands it to waiter and waiter rushes it away behind a dark curtain.

Scenario B: Waiter brings spiffy new “register” to the table and leaves. In it is a device that enables a consumer to pay any number of ways, even with their mobile device, and walks away without needing a paper trail.

Payments innovators talk about the days where consumers will ditch their wallets and rely solely on a mobile device to conduct all transactions. Those same payment innovators, however, realize the consumer payment market is nowhere near such a seismic shift — despite the many, many mobile pay players in the market attempting to disrupt and reinvent payments.

Payment checks are even still a common payment form, despite many in the industry calling for the death of checks. And cash. But for now, credit cards — and now those equipped with their new chips — aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. That’s why companies who enable payments (including mobile) realize their systems need to support a growing number of payment methods.

Which kind of complicates things in a restaurant. When asked about what diners want when dining in a fancy restaurant (besides good food?), they say: being able to pay their own way.

Now, imagine a traditional payment process at a restaurant. The consumer waits for the bill, presents the payment option (credit or cash), waits for the waiter, the waiter takes the payment option (often behind a mysterious curtain), runs the payment option and sometime later returns to the table with the check and paper receipt that holds the transaction details.

TableSafe is out to change that. It delivers a solution that gives consumers new options but packaged in the same familiar check register that diners know and, sort of, love. In the form of something it calls the RAIL 2 device.

Once a table is done with its meal, in the case of TableSafe and its RAIL 2 device, the waiter brings over a bill folder that looks like the traditional black folder patrons are used to seeing. But what’s different is the dinner is given a digital checkout experience that offers multiple ways to pay, including via mobile, via chip card and via mag stripe card. And, of course, via cash.

Or, if the restaurant prefers, via PayPal, via bitcoin or via QR codes, including the option to use coupons right at the table or present customer loyalty programs during the digital checkout experience (including the receipt).

TableSafe says that RAIL 2 aims to take the friction out of payments when customers either want to split the bill, split by amount or split by specific items. Instead of explaining that to the wait staff, the consumers can simply take care of the bill on their terms, right from the table.

“This functions such that restaurant environment by intent from us does not overtly change anything about their culture or environment for the entire dining experience,” explained TableSafe Chief Technology Officer Michael Weaver in an interview with PYMNTS. “In today’s world, when you’re using the existing payment devices when they ring up a table, it requires a lot of time and interaction from the wait staff.”

And when it comes to enabling payment methods that cater to consumer choice, it means being payments-agnostic.

Mobile, for TableSafe, can also be done through its mobile app that allows consumers to use their phone to pay through the RAIL 2 payment device at the table. After all, Weaver said, the only way to future proof payments systems is to offer the latest solutions on the market.

“Mobile is great. It makes it a great opportunity, whether it’s for the millennials or anyone else who wants to use that really flexible and quick functionality with your smartphone. But you still can’t leave the rest of them stranded,” Weaver said.

But mobile isn’t everything. For the hospitality and dining business, it means having the chance to transform the customer’s experience, reduce costs, cut friction and create customer loyalty. Because there’s no one trend, businesses have to be equipped to handle all types of transactions in order to attract and retain customers.

“When you look at the adoption rate of mobile, nobody has a higher adoption rate in hospitality than Starbucks. Yet, a huge percentage of people don’t use it. If they were to say, ‘From now on, we’re only taking mobile” today, they’d serve fewer than half of their customers.”

But that hasn’t stopped the industry from creating devices that enable consumers to use their smartphones to pay — whether it be in app, with a QR code, at the register or at the table.