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Shift4 Payments Inc. on Monday announced it is expanding its Quick Response code capabilities for restaurant clients to include an ordering function. Customers will now be able to scan a QR code displayed by the eatery to bring up a menu and to place an order, the Allentown, Pa.-based processor says. “We have a number of pilot sites that have been testing it, and have seem some pretty good adoption” by customers, says Nate Hirshberg, vice president of marketing for Shift4.
The new feature relies on the native browser in the customer’s smart phone to open the menu and take the diner’s order. The customer may also pay at the same time by using Apple Pay, Google Pay, or by entering his or her credit card information. “The customer places an order through the browser and pays through the browser,” Hirshberg says.
The new ordering capability follows technology called QR Pay that Shift4 introduced this summer to allow customers to view a bill. Sit-down restaurants that deliver a bill to the diner’s table, for example, can use QR Pay to allow the customer to scan a QR code to see a bill and pay it.
The new QR code-based feature from Shift4 also follows an ordering capability Square Inc. rolled out late last month for restaurants that use Square Online. The new feature lets diners scan a QR code displayed by the eatery to view a menu and place an order.
Restaurants and other retail operations have been eager to introduce contactless interactions in the face of the Covd-19 pandemic, which has given a boost to near-field communication (NFC) technology as well as QR codes. “As contactless solutions become more popular with consumers, it’s important that businesses are able to provide an experience that caters to this demand,” Jared Isaacman, Shift4’s chief executive, said in a statement Monday.
QR codes are popular for mobile payments in Asia but have only recently found a foothold in North America, where the biggest development so far involves PayPal Holdings Inc. The CVS Pharmacy chain has agreed to deploy QR code functionality at some 8,200 stores for customers using PayPal wallets.
