We have been eating out in restaurants for centuries now! Earlier, it used to be a luxury and slowly it became a way to socialize for the general public… Pubs, cafes, eateries to fine dine places, we have a ton of options to choose from these days…
From asking your friends and family for local restaurant recommendations to checking nearby restaurants on maps, we’ve come a long way. It won’t stop there… We now open food specific services to understand more about a particular restaurant or pub or whatever place we want to eat at, Google map reviews, ratings, pictures and what not is looked at before deciding on a place to visit… Only if I had done this much research during my engineering days that I’d have been a scientist with engineering know-how by now…
Nevertheless, the main agenda of my topic now is the way we pay for the food… All research done, tables booked, we visit the place, order food and consume it to our hearts’ content, comes the time when the check is presented… People normally pay by cash or a variety of cards. I wish to see this change entirely…
You may be using a smartphone nowadays. You use that to take nice pictures of the food and post it on the social media. Why don’t you use it to pay for the same food before leaving from the restaurant? With the advent of digital payments, you don’t need to go to an ATM to draw cash or face a risk of your card details being skimmed off. Just use your phone, pay using the various services that’s available to you to make secure payments at a tap of a button.
Being a resident of India, there’s massive push for digital payments by the administration currently holding power. From a small bakery to hawkers on streets now support digital payments for purchases made. Be it a ₹1 or ₹1 million, at the click of a button, money is transferred from person to person. With this I’ve saved a lot of hassle during the past events like demonetisation, lack of cash in ATMs during festive season and a lot of scenarios. These days, all I have is hunger and a smartphone (at the least) when visiting a place for food. Pay for the food, tip the waiters, all at a click of the button.
UPI based services, Samsung Pay, and a various other means just eliminate your need to carry a lot of cash and cards for your shopping needs here in India. With incentives like cashback and upfront discount, it’s more rewarding to go digital is what I feel… Click, eat, pay → All from the same smartphone.