If you own a fast food outlet like a takeaway, burger bar or anything like this, do you accept debit cards? If you don’t you could actually be losing a lot of business. Fast food needs fast payment…

Fast food is a cash business is it not?

It can be yes, but not so much these days. This is particularly so if your customer is placing a large order. You may be right in your assumption that a customer wouldn’t use a debit card to pay for a bag of chips, but if they were buying dinner for more than one person they might really appreciate the opportunity to pay with their card.

Make the payments as fast as your food.

People like to live fast these days. When you walk into McDonalds you expect to be able to order your food, pay for it, and get it in less than a minute; I know it rarely happens like but this gives you a model to follow. If your takeaway provides genuine fast food then make the payment process fast too. There is no need for slow terminals anymore if you are accepting card payments, you need to know that as soon as you enter the amount into the terminal, your customer only has to enter their PIN number and the job is finished.

If you have fast payments and easy payments you can guarantee you will have repeat visitors. Not only do people love food, they also love lots of it and fast!

Late night fast food.

Have you ever been one of those people who have been out late at night after a night out with friends and wanted to eat something on the way home? Isn’t it always the case that you don’t have any money left? Well you would do well to remember this when you set up payments in your take away. If you allow those late night customers to pay with their debit card they are not going to be too concerned about how much they spend because they are not actually taking any money out of their pocket; having card terminals in place allows you to dissociate your customer with their cash.

Telephone and internet payments for your takeaway.

There are two more uses for your card terminal when you run a takeaway. You can take telephone and internet orders. There are many good reasons for this:

• Telephone orders are less likely to cancel or refuse to answer the door to the takeaway delivery guy if they have placed their order and paid via the phone or internet.
• You get the security of knowing you have got your money up front.
• Less likely to have any cash go missing through theft or error from your delivery drivers.
• You can allow your customers the luxury of paying in advance and simply collecting their food when it is ready to avoid waiting around.

To conclude

As the general public use their debit and credit cards more and more each year, retailers and service providers are more and more required to accept them. Accepting card payments needn’t be a costly, inconvenient step to take; it can be very fruitful and extremely easy.