The research coincided with its official launch on the back of raised £1 million in new funding from mobile payment specialists Entreé Capital, adding to a £150,000 seed round from unnamed industry folk raised six months earlier. The new capital will be used to scale its technology, picking up new restaurant partners along the way, and to further develop its product line.
The Flypay app works by by simply scan an on-table QR code/NFC tag to first recall the bill. Then, using the app, you can check the bill and pay using a credit or debit card, including the option to split the bill with others at your table — either by paying off specific items or splitting the bill equally. This dramatically reduces to get the time it takes to ask for and settle a restaurant bill down from an average of ten minutes to closer to a minute.
For restaurant operators, the advantages are three-fold. First, of course, the process of settling a bill doesn’t tie up a waiter, who can continue serving other customers instead of faffing around with chip ‘n’ pin. In fact, Flypay reckons it currently takes an average three visits by a waiter to enable a customer to settle their bill. This could effectively increase the throughput of a restaurant allowing more covers to be served as all the wasted ten minutes per table throughout the day in a busy restaurant could allow an extra sitting or two.
And, by app-ifying this process, there’s an additional payoff. The startup is able to offer in-app customer loyalty schemes in which Flypay integrates with restaurant marketing and CRM systems to potentially provide rewards and discounts for a restaurant’s most valued customers or to entice repeat visitors.
To that end, Flyapp is disclosing two major brand customers: Wahaca are using the Flypay app as a pay-at-table solution, and Burrito Mama are using Flypay’s tech (effectively a white-label version “powered by Flyapp”) within their order-ahead app to enable customers to order a burrito as they approach the takeout so that it’s ready to collect and pay for when they arrive.
