A New Mobile Wallet Is Set to Emerge for Electronic Games in Bars And Restaurants

With the proliferation of smart phones, mobile wallets have been specializing in recent years as businesses find ways to work them into their payments stream and consumers find the devices impossible to leave behind.

Now, mobile payments are coming to the world of electronic games in bars and restaurants. TouchTunes Music Co. LLC, which claims to be largest interactive music and entertainment platform for such venues, announced it will launch later this year a new mobile app called FunWallet with Bullshooters, a producer of electronic dartboards. TouchTunes claims the new wallet will be an “industry first.”

TouchTunes, based in New York City, can make the move following its acquisition earlier this year of Arachnid 360, a producer of the electronic darts games found in bars and eateries. TouchTunes says the FunWallet venture also includes support from Valley Dynamo, a maker of table games, and ASK Global Solutions, a provider of cashless payments technology. Both companies say they are integrating the wallet exclusively.

Generally speaking, mobile wallets for such games are “a smart play,” notes Cliff Gray, a senior associate at Omaha-based TSG, a payments research and advisory firm, as they appeal to “everyone with a [mobile] phone in their pocket.” Some 92% of Americans owned at least one smart phone in 2023, according to Consumer Affairs.

FunWallet relies on credits customers have piled up in their TouchTunes mobile app, and TouchTunes says it can supply a “retrofit” kit for machines not yet connected online. The company says it supports jukeboxes in more than 65,000 bars, restaurants, and breweries in North America and Europe, plus 30,000-plus connected electronic dartboards globally, following the deal for Arachnid.

For older, unconnected machines, TouchTunes says it can make available a retrofit kit at “low cost.”

TouchTunes, which was founded in 1990, was acquired by private-equity firm TA Associates two years ago. Terms were not made available.