Let’s give it up for the lowly fast food restaurant and its QSR cousins. Often confined to the bottom levels of culture — demeaned, mocked and stereotyped — they are now, as an industry, not only coming into their own as digital operations, but in some case leading the edge of mobile and related technologies.
Look no further than such developments as mobile order-ahead services or in-store kiosks. There are robots, of course, along with moves to improve delivery to meet demands from consumers who increasingly want to eat at home, and on their own schedules.
Yet the QSR industry’s ongoing embrace of digital and mobile technology raises another issue: How do you prevent criminals from exploiting all those fresh technologies to practice fraud? And how do you craft and operate an effective fraud-prevention strategy in an industry fragmented into franchises, in which individual owners — in many cases, mom-and-pops — are not always in synch with corporate headquarters?
A new, in-depth story from PYMNTS tells that story with the help of Tricia Phillips, senior vice president, product and strategy, at fraud prevention company Kount. Progress always comes with problems, and she describes some of the challenges unique to QSRs as they work to up their digital and mobile power. Unsophisticated criminals play a role, as do delinquent — if resourceful — teenagers.
QSRs are working hard to stand out from the competition, and to make it easy for hungry consumers to order food without putting too many hurdles — also known as friction — in the path of transactions. Balancing security and the ease of purchase is among the main problems facing all types of eCommerce, and that’s certainly the case with QSRs.
If QSRs cannot do that, Phillips said, “then you are basically undoing all the work you’ve done.”
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