How COVID Made Contactless Dining the Norm

Diners already are in an environment of heightened stress during the coronavirus pandemic. The last thing they need to worry about is staying safe while paying the bill.

That’s why solutions like Ready, which allows customers to check out using their own technology and without coming into contact with servers or a cashier, are perfect for this moment. But Laurent May, Ready’s CEO, believes this low-stress system allowing people to take cashing out into their own hands will be here to stay.

“If you think about things in the context of COVID and (ask) what’s going to snap back to where it was before and what’s going to be a new baseline … we absolutely believe that, once customers try this touchless checkout, there’s absolutely no reason they’d go back to what they were doing,” May said. “It saves time, it’s safer and it’s better for the staff.”

The company’s numbers show nearly 98% of people who use the service once would use it again, but the challenge in the United States, which has been slower to adapt to contactless payment than other regions of the world, has been getting them to do so for the first time.

The pandemic created a convergence of business owners offering touchless and customers wanting (or demanding) to have an option to use it.

“What COVID did is, really on both sides of that relationship, push the requirement and the offering of touchless experiences for merchants and consumers. Whereas Ready was deployed and would be not seen by everyone before, I think there’s an expectation now that I’m going to have contactless payments and I’m going to be in control of my guest experience,” May said.

Hear more from Laurent at our virtual roundtable event Enabling America’s Economic Recovery this Thursday, October 29 at 3PM ET. Register today here.