Why online payment is the future of restaurant payment

We’ve all been there: you’re sitting in front of your computer when you see this one ad that’s just too hard to resist. You’re going to splurge for the pair or shoes or the Bluetooth speakers you’ve been eyeing for weeks.

You reach for your wallet (unless your credit card details are already saved on your browser), you enter your credit card number, the security code and the expiry date, and a few seconds later, you get a message telling you your package will be delivered to you in 4 to 5 business days. Yeay!

Gone are the days when people were reluctant to enter their credit card information on the internet for fear of being defrauded or hacked.

Card not present transactions (CNP) are more secure and regulated than ever. This is in part, what has allowed ecommerce to boom: according to the US Department of Commerce, 1 of 5$ spent for retail in Q2 2020 was spent on ecommerce!

You might think the boom of non-store retail and ecommerce has little to do with the sector of hospitality and restaurants: after all, delivery services aside, the diners of a restaurant are actually there when they pay the check…

You’d be mistaken: remote payment can go a long way for restaurant owners who decide to adopt it, even for their on-site guests.

At sunday, we experienced this firsthand by allowing our partner restaurants to use our electronic, QR code payment solution. We’ve helped dozens of establishments digitize their operations. In this article, we explain why online payment is important for them and how to take advantage of it.

Online payment: a secure process

What is non-store retailing and CNP transactions?

As you might suspect, non-store retailing is a name for every retail transaction that doesn’t happen inside a store. It long predates the internet revolution: teleshopping and mail orders are examples of card not present transactions.

With the internet, CNP transactions have become more and more popular. The problem is: fraud is more likely when the card (and the cardholder) are not physically present.

Perfecting online payment methods

In order to win over the trust of consumers, security checks were put in place. Retailers are advised to ask for the phone number, name and address of the people they bill to make sure they’re the actual card owners.

Visa and Mastercard have perfected their authentication process, called 3D Secure. Digital wallets such as Paypal were developed. And the two tech giants Apple and Google have released their respective “Pay” solutions. But what’s in it for restaurants?

Why are restaurants jumping on the CNP bandwagon?

You might think the rise of CNP has little to do with restaurants. But the sanitary crisis has accelerated their digitalization and pushed them to look for new payment methods.

Delivery platforms

The government’s shelter-in-place order effectively shut down most restaurants. Turning to delivery services was their only effective way of staying open. And the business of food delivery apps has more than doubled in the US during the pandemic.

Apps such as GrubHub and UberEats can integrate directly to most POS systems and take the weight of CNP payment off of most restaurant owners’ shoulders. Some establishments have even tried to receive CNP payments themselves through an online payment portal. For most restaurant owners, the pandemic is a first foray into the world of remote payment.

The rise of tap-to-pay

When restaurants were finally able to reopen their doors, the rules of social distancing were still in effect. Restaurant owners and retailers had to find ways to avoid handling diners’ checks, bills or bank cards…

Contactless payments were already popular before the pandemic, but their usage has soared afterwards. Tap-to-pay was presented as an ideal solution: all guests have to do is present their credit card or phone in front of the payment terminal.

But there was a catch: the amount of money that can be paid through contactless in one go is often limited by banks and financial institutions.

Moreover, tap-to-pay doesn’t necessarily help restaurants work faster and be more effective: the staff still needs to bring the check to the table and take each client’s payment. Contactless doesn’t do much except avoiding physical contact.

The many advantages of online payment

Restaurant owners who have already used delivery platforms are familiar with online payment: they know that this solution is secure, simple, and requires little effort from their diners and themselves.

Using it for their on-site guests too allows them to respect the rules of social distancing and to minimize contact between staff and clients. But there’s more.

Online payments can also take the weight of payments off of the shoulders of the waiting staff. They no longer need to bring the bill to the table.

They just have to redirect their diners to a link they can open on their smartphone and which allows them to pay for what they have consumed.

Clients just have to follow a simple protocol that they already know quite well (69% of Americans have already shopped online!) to pay the bill and leave whenever they see fit.

Of course, they won’t need to enter their banking information every single time: there are many electronic solutions that offer to save banking data, as well as electronic wallets such as Paypal or Venmo.

Think about it: they don’t have to enter their information every time they use UberEats! Why would it be any different on-site?

OK, sounds great. But how does it work in practice?

How to set up CNP payment in your establishment?

The CNP solution seems enticing for restaurants. But it might seem hard to put in place all by yourself.

Restaurant owners who turn to online payments have to make sure they respect the legal framework of CNP transactions and offer safe payment methods to their diners from a technical standpoint. Oh, and they also have to make sure the whole experience is smooth.

• They first have to choose a suitable CNP protocol and put it in place.
• They must find a way to automatically present each table with an electronic check allowing it to pay exactly what it has consumed, without any margin of error.
• They have to be able to redirect each table to the webpage corresponding to their check without having to spell out a link to them.
• They must design the mobile webpage they redirect their guests to so it’s consistent with their brand.
• They must report back the payment into their POS system so they can keep track of every transaction.

It seems almost impossible to do all of this on your own.

Fortunately, you can turn to sunday: we do all of this for you and set up restaurant online payments for you through a QR code system that allows you to take advantage of CNP without any worry. For more info, you can head here!