Do-it-Yourself Credit Card Processing
In an effort to speed up table turnover at peak hours and eliminate waitress credit card skimming (waitresses who take your credit card as payment and make a copy of the information for themselves or to sell), many US restaurants are installing swipe machines at each table at sit-down restaurants.
This do-it-yourself credit card processing is common at gas pumps and many retail shopping establishments in the US, but has barely even started in sit-down restaurants. Mostly due to restaurant owners not wanting to pay to get the equipment.
Participating restaurants will have remote-control like units on each table that allows people to swipe their credit or debit cards at their tables and pay for both the food and a tip. The card information is sent wirelessly to the restaurants computer and a printer will spit out the receipt that a server will bring to the table.
If this becomes popular in the US restaurants, I think they should take it a step further and have the hand held device act as both the menu and the order taker, as well. Let me enter my order in the remote-control, and have the printer in the kitchen spit it out for the cooks. That ought to speed up the process of waiting for the server to make it over to take our orders, too.
jeremy said,
September 17, 2007 @ 10:23 pm
Sonic has this at all their drive-ins now and I absolutely love it!
susan said,
September 19, 2007 @ 4:35 pm
I saw this 3 years ago in French restaurants. They brought the device to the table when you were ready to pay the bill. It was a bit weird sitting in a restaurant in a medieval building paying the bill by swiping on a high tech device. Cool tho. Europeans are ages ahead of us w.r.t. smart cards and electronic payments. You don’t need to carry much cash anymore.
I don’t think restaurants need to invest in a device for every table, maybe 1 for every waiter. that is not a big an investment.
debbie said,
September 20, 2007 @ 9:37 am
One for every waiter is not a bad idea- but I think the purpose of do-it-yourself processing is that you can swipe the card and get out of there when you’re done eating- and don’t have to wait for the waiter to make his or her way back over to you.
BUT- if each waiter had one, you would never lose sight of your card and that should help reduce the number of cards that get copied when the waiter walks away to charge the card (and then casually writes down the card details on a slip of paper and slides it in his pocket before returning the card to you!)
www.topcreditcardsadvice.info » Do-it-Yourself Credit Card Processing said,
October 9, 2007 @ 8:51 pm
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