Pay at the Table: Single-Purpose App versus Digital Wallet

By James Buttino, President, Systems East, Inc.

People love their mobile devices. They never leave home without them, and keep them within easy reach all day. They make our lives easier, so consumers are consequently beginning to demand that businesses offer a mobile payment option. However, the question remains: single-purpose app, or web-based digital wallet? To ensure convenience and security for your patrons and eliminate “app-fatigue” – downloading countless apps and remembering which to use for each business – a web-based digital wallet will clearly prevail, and here’s why.

Visit booth 9552 to learn more. For additional information, please visit www.xpress-paymobile.com, call (607) 753-6156, or email [email protected]. For a recent TV news segment, visit www.xpress-pay.com/video.

Starbucks offers a good example of a single-purpose app. With millions of payments in 2012, it also demonstrates the consumer’s appetite for a mobile payment option. However, given their requirement to use a credit card to fund a Starbucks card which subsequently funds the app, consumers will demand a more convenient solution once the novelty wears off. Moreover, people dine and shop at hundreds of locations, and cannot be expected to maintain a separate app, login, password, and funding for each.

Beyond convenience, your customers will also demand that mobile payments are secure. With the increasing threat of identity theft, people are increasingly reluctant to surrender their card to a stranger. This means that your mobile offering must be integrated with the POS, allowing a secure exchange of payment information rather than involving your staff. This also translates into a considerable increase in efficiency for your business.

There is also the matter of exposure. Single-purpose apps require confidential card information to be stored in several places. With a digital wallet, sensitive information is stored only in the wallet, but can be used in a variety of locations. The vendor receives customer information and a transaction reference number, but never sees the credit card number.

Practicality was a fundamental consideration in the design of Xpress-pay Mobile, released in 2011. Since it was a full-featured extension of Xpress-pay.com, our Internet payment product, we understood public expectation of convenience and security. For restaurants it also had to provide specific tangible benefits, including accelerated table turnover and efficiency for your staff.

The restaurant pay-at-the-table component of Xpress-pay Mobile was released in January, and as a secure digital wallet, eliminates “app fatigue” and is well on its way to becoming the unified national solution. Better still, Xpress-pay empowers the consumer’s phone so there is no equipment required for acceptance – the consumer already owns it, and we are confident a consumer-based secure digital wallet solution will prevail.