Restaurants and Customers Agree: Short Lines Are Simply Better

Imagine sitting at a crowded restaurant after a meal with friends and it’s 11 p.m. at night. Suddenly, it seems everyone wants their check at the same time, leaving the few waiters struggling to cater to eager guests who already have one foot out the door.

In an interview with PYMNTS, Adnan Haque, CEO at United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based payment FinTech Spades, said those long wait times to pay bills end up costing restaurant brands considerable time and money, not to mention the risk of jeopardizing long-term customer retention.

It’s a pain point he hopes Spades’ web-based solution can help solve, providing a service that allows dine-in guests to pay bills easily by scanning a QR code on the table or tapping to pay, without having to register or download any app on their phone.

Launched in 2021, the solution, which can integrate with any major point of sale (POS) system, does not replace the human touch from the service, he explained. Rather, it provides a “phygital” model aimed at improving the overall dine-in experience.

“The beauty is that the engagement [between staff and guests] is still there, but it’s no longer focused on time-consuming, administrative tasks,” Haque told PYMNTS, adding that the entire process of calling the waiter, getting the check, settling the bill, or even splitting it among guests — which would normally take 10-15 minutes — is now reduced to seconds with the Spades solution.

According to Haque, the product has been designed with the consumer’s convenience in mind. Once customers are finished with their meal, all they have to do is to pull up their camera and scan the QR code. Customers then land on a page where they can view a copy of their bill, make an instant payment or split it in real-time among peers, using their preferred payment method.

This makes the web-based solution — which has data coming directly from the point of sale — a game changer for restaurants who find themselves struggling to ensure a smooth payment process at peak hours, he noted.

Another important feature he highlighted is the ability for customers to tip the staff, which he claimed has significantly increased tips from less than 2% to between 6% and 10% for an average service.

Slow But Steady Uptake

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA)-based dine-in payment FinTech recently closed a $2.5 million angel round to pursue its goal of giving back time to customers and restaurants and creating a strong “phygital” product aimed at elevating the dine-in experience to a new level.

Read more: UAE-Based FinTech Spades Raises $2.5M in Angel Round

But despite its promise to disrupt dine-in payments, Haque said the solution has not been “selling like hotcakes” as they expected.

It’s a result he attributed to the numerous decision makers in the value chain who have to be convinced — from restaurant owner, general manager and marketing brand manager to the chief financial officer and the operations manager in charge of training and the one to sign off on the addition of new standard operating procedures (SOPs).

“The reality is that when you have a decision maker in the room that is tech savvy and understands that this is going to improve their lives, we may be able to sell very quickly, but the adoption and the actual onboarding might take a little bit longer [given all the other people involved],” he explained.

Other conservative restaurateurs are more upfront about not wanting to embrace the solution just yet, Haque remarked, even though more and more restaurant owners are realizing that adopting newer technologies to save time and cost is the new norm.

It’s an accelerated digital shift triggered by the pandemic that he said has contributed to the rapid adoption of cashless payments in the MENA region and the growth of their business, albeit at a slow pace.

“[Without the pandemic], we probably would have had a much steeper, steeper climb up the hill,” Haque said. “But [so far] customers are loving it, the restaurant owners are loving it, even though sometimes it takes conversations with multiple decision makers to [finally get merchants fully onboard].”

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