By
Ed Finegold
There are very few places that sell anything that won't accept a credit or debit card, even on a remote island like Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands. After snorkeling, you can walk up the beach into Foxy's and buy the whole bar a round of rum punch with the swipe of a card. Foxy's doesn't have a floor, or walls for that matter, but it has a digital cash register and a POS terminal. Eight years ago Jost Van Dyke didn't have a road or a cell tower, but today it has one of each. Chicago has many roads, cell sites, and ubiquitous POS terminals in every restaurant, shop, and all over O'Hare airport. But if you're sitting in the stands at Wrigley Field and don't want to get up for a beer and a dog, you still have to pay cash to the guy hawking the suds. If Derek Lee is about to hit another bomb out across Waveland, you don't want to miss it because you're out of cash and waiting in line for an Old Style and an Italian sausage while clutching your Visa check card. Naturally, the question arises, "when will I finally be able to pay for everything with my cell phone?" If you're in Japan, the answer is "today." But here in the U.S., and throughout most of Western Europe, it might be a little while.
McMobile Payments
Going from the fixed POS terminals we see today to enabling payments through mobile phones seems like a logical progression. It's hard to imagine why anyone who's trying to
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It's difficult to buy the idea that McDonald's doesn't want to go wireless because customers truly enjoy face to face interactions with the staff. |
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should anyone wait in the drive-thru line when it could be as easy as pressing a few buttons, paying automatically via mobile phone, and then simply hitting the pick up window on the way home? According to a spokesman from McDonald's, the company has found that its customers "like the face to face interaction with our crew." He explains that McDonald's goal is to "maintain a 90 second service time at the counter and drive-thru" and that its restaurants are able to maintain that metric "without the use of
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sell anything wouldn't want to make it even easier to do than sending a text message. For telecoms, this should represent a wide open opportunity to bring a potent application to market. At some point in the near future it will – but the market isn't quite ready just yet.
On the surface it would seem that a company like McDonald's, for instance, would be banging down AT&T Wireless' door to put its menu on MediaNet and enable instant payment through the mobile phone. Why
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wireless technology" and therefore hasn't reached "the point where we'd need to use that technology yet."
He says that the 90 second service time is a self-imposed standard and is the "one factor that drives our decision the most." If the company needed to change the way it operates to maintain that standard, it would look at wireless capabilities again. He says that McDonald's has "looked at" using wireless applications for ordering and payment, and
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