Rising inflation rates have been hard on most but not least of all the restaurant industry. Operating with tighter margins than ever, they need to be able to turn tables quicker, increase spend wherever possible and improve their customer service to beat the competition.
That's why Sunday is a game-changer in the restaurant industry. Sunday lets customers scan a QR code, split the bill, leave a tip, pay, get a receipt and leave a review in 10 seconds— all through their smartphone. The speed and efficiency that is introduced to the restaurant experience through the app is helping restaurant’s save 15 mins per table and increase average basket size by 12%. Ultimately, they are doing this by bringing online efficiencies to the offline dining experience.
The innovative nature of Sunday and what they provide for customers exists in a space that many other payment solutions have not yet caught up with. Restaurant customers are making digital payments that the industry sees as potentially at risk of fraud, but they are doing this where they can be verified in person by the business taking their payment. These unique payment criteria led Sunday to Intelligent Acceptance from Checkout.com, a new product that leverages a global network of data, continuous experimentation with AI and expert knowledge of the industry to optimize every transaction.
The optimized payment experience for Sunday customers has already seen an 8% increase in acceptance rates for some card networks and markets. Intelligent Acceptance is helping to facilitate a frictionless customer experience that can boost restaurant sales as they decrease the time it takes to serve each customer.
Sunday presents a unique payment scenario, bridging the gap between online and in-person transactions. Their use case involves Card-Not-Present (CNP) transactions – where the card isn’t physically presented at the time of payment – made in traditionally Card-Present environments like restaurants or bars. As CNP transactions tend to have higher friction rates, Sunday wanted to make their experience as convenient as contactless payments for its customers.
Optimizing when 3D Secure (3DS) is triggered for online card payments is a high priority. In an industry where customer experience is paramount, any unnecessary friction in the payment process can affect customer satisfaction and ultimately, business results.
The optimizations that were carried out through Intelligent Acceptance were able to reduce friction for customers when paying using a card on the app, therefore, allowing restaurants to serve more customers and increase spending and tips.
“We share a similar mindset with Checkout.com as we both have an obsession with performance and providing a seamless uninterrupted customer experience. With the Intelligent Acceptance product, we were able to better bridge the gap between Card-Present & Card-Not-Present payment performance” says Daniel Hosking.
Sunday’s ’unique risk profile means they needed a trusted partner for authentication management, with the industry experience and issuer relationships to leverage the best performing Transaction Risk Analysis (TRA) exemptions that help reduce unnecessary friction for genuine customers from 3D Secure protocols. And that’s where Intelligent Acceptance comes in - simplifying the TRA process with issuers, eliminating the need to manually request exemptions, and delivering the right optimizations for the optimum payment experience.
Without any additional integration work, the solution requests frictionless flows on Sunday’s behalf – with Checkout.com enabled to request the maximum TRA amount (€500) in many countries – and provides rich transaction data to support each exemption application based issuer preference. Where 3DS is requested by Sunday or the issuer, Intelligent Acceptance then performs the 3DS protocol version with the highest chance of success to minimize lost revenue.
Additionally, by implementing smart messaging strategies, Sunday could ensure that each transaction is automatically adapted to issuer preferences, scheme mandates and the latest regulations. Modifications to ISO8583 messaging – the critical standard for systems that exchange electronic transactions initiated by cardholders using payment cards – is powered by millions of data points across the global Checkout.com merchant network.
Since optimizing payment requests with Intelligent Acceptance’s automated SCA 3DS and payment messaging capabilities, Sunday increased their approval rate by 8% on some card types.
However, even when all this is carried out and transactions are in the best possible position for success, the varying preferences of the players in the payment chain — Access Control Servers (ACS), card schemes and over 10,000 issuers — can mean that even a legitimate payment can be declined. That’s why Intelligent Acceptance has built-in retry capabilities. For Sunday, the implementation of tailored retry strategies for recovery and compliance has further increased overall payment acceptance rates, resulting in an uplift of 1.4% in some markets and card types.
In terms of measuring payment performance success, Daniel Hosking says “We look at both the initial transaction approval rate (first try) and also on the customer level through customer initiated retries. One of the largest failure reasons are “Do not honour” transactions which are an enigma in the payments world, Checkout.com allows us to better understand what triggers these opaque responses from the Issuers so we can better improve our chances of having that transaction approved.”
Checkout.com is proud to be a part of Sunday's continued success in setting a new standard in the restaurant and bar industry—facilitating the future of how people will pay.
By leveraging Checkout.com’s Intelligent Acceptance to drive frictionless and secure payments, Sunday is able to provide a seamless blend of digital and physical interactions in the dining experience.
In a world where online and offline experiences are increasingly interconnected, Checkout.com and Sunday continue to lead the way, innovating to offer secure and streamlined payment solutions, and continually pushing the boundaries of what's possible in the restaurant industry.
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