Qkr is one of the best restaurant payment experiences I've had

In Manchester this week for a meeting, I quickly popped out for lunch and noticed there was a Wagamama just round the corner from the office. I peered inside and saw it was quite busy. I only had 25 minutes but reasoned I could probably order a few starters and be back in the office inside 25 minutes… especially, I remembered, if I used Qkr. 

Qkr is the restaurant payment system that Wagamama implemented back in March. I’m sure I’ve written about it before, but I thought I might as well describe the experience once more, in case you haven’t tried it.
I was rather focused on the all day meeting and wanted to make sure I could get back at the appointed time, so when I was seated, I asked the waitress if I could order right-away. She nodded and went to get her little gizmo. 

I brought out my phone, fired up Qkr, selected the restaurant from a list (based on my location) and selected ‘host a table’. 

When you do that, the Qkr system presents you with a screen like this: 

I turned my phone to the waitress as she arrived and she nodded. I then ordered a series of starters — I knew these would be turned around quickly and given I hadn’t had any breakfast (and not much to eat the night before) I wanted to fill up swiftly then exit. 

The waitress tapped out my order on her little gizmo, thanked me, smiled and then walked away. I then watched as my order appeared on the next screen of the Qkr app:

Flipping genius.

Within minutes the food began to arrive and I chomped swiftly through it as I reviewed all the emails I’d been missing during the morning. 

When I was finished, I didn’t have to wait. 

And this is the power and brilliance of Qkr. Once you’re done, you don’t need to wait for the bill. You already have it in your hand. You can sidestep all that nonsense of asking for the bill, then waiting for the waitress to grab the machine and blah blah blah blah.

I tapped the credit card button in the middle. 

That brought up another screen where all I had to do was swipe and my (pre-registered) card was then charged. Boom.

I briefly showed my phone to the waitress as I got up to walk out and she checked the till system and saw my bill had been paid — complete with optional tip! 

I then opted to have Qkr email me a receipt to my pre-registered email (although your payment details are  recorded in the app). 

It was a superb experience in Manchester. So I repeated it again yesterday with a colleague and this time took some screenshots as I walked through the process. 

Kudos to Mastercard, the people behind Qkr. If you haven’t tried it, I recommend downloading the app and popping into a nearby Wagamama shortly. 

Here’s the press release from Mastercard with more details about Qkr.