Cashless Tips

How Can the Hospitality Sector Embrace Cashless Tips Technology?

The hospitality & beauty sectors across the UK could see a shortfall of more than £81 million in missed tips due to the rapid acceleration of a cashless society amid Covid-19.

Not only are people more wary of using cash due to perceived risk of infection, but businesses like shops, pubs, cafes, restaurants and hairdressers are requesting that people use contactless payment methods wherever possible, with some refusing cash transactions altogether.

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve seen businesses start to reopen that were forced to close during lockdown. Huge efforts have gone into making hairdressers, pubs, cafes and restaurants safe for customers and staff by putting in new Covid-safe procedures. Social distancing regulations, mandatory mask-wearing and hand sanitising stations are just some of the precautions being introduced.

These are obviously paramount!

But what about tips?

We can see from the figures above that tips make up a huge chunk of business and personal earnings. But if people are being asked not to pay in cash, and there’s no way to incorporate a service donation as part of the bill or during the final transaction, that money will be lost.

Consideration needs to be taken for this element of cashless practises during business re-opening. Adopting new processes and systems to help with cashless tipping is just another way that businesses will have to adapt during this pandemic.

Research has suggested that:

  • 63% of customers wouldn’t tip if they couldn’t use cash
  • 75% of people said that they would worry about using cash due to increased risk of infection

This implies that any cashless tipping technology needs to be straightforward. Based on a standard 10% tip, these survey results indicate that in the hairdressing sector alone, there will be a UK loss of £81,270,000 in tips.

The movement towards a cashless society is nothing new, but has been accelerated due to the fears surrounding cash instigated by Covid-19. And it’s not all doom and gloom – The ease of digital payments and rise of payment-enabled devices mean that paying without cash is more accessible than ever.

However the impact remains on the service sector – It’s imperative that hospitality industries embrace the technology that is on offer to enable cashless tips. Of course, businesses could try relying on customers to change their tipping behaviour, or even allow some level of cash payment. But they could also implement technology that makes cashless payment a clear, simple and straightforward option.

Hospitality businesses, just like charities, need to make sure they move with the times and adapt to change.

One innovative way of embracing cashless tips that we’ve seen in our home city is to introduce QR codes on bills. This way a customer doesn’t have to download an app – They just use their smartphone to scan the code and choose how much tip they would like to give. Easy!

Donater smart sticker technology does just that. Designed primarily for the use of charities, donors either just tap their phone on the sticker or (for older smartphones) scan the QR code to make their donation. Our smart stickers are ideal for bucket collections or charity boxes at point of sale – Offering a cashless way of giving money with a simple tap of their phone.

This technology is also a perfect solution to the cashless tip problem the hospitality sector is facing. Smart stickers can be placed almost anywhere – The dish you serve the bill in, the cutlery pot on the table, the back of the menu, the mirror your customer sits in front of for the duration of a hair appointment… There are so many possibilities. By not placing the sticker on the bill itself, you are giving customers the opportunity to pay a tip in their own time, perhaps while waiting for the final bill or while their hair dye is developing.

For more information on how our Donater smart stickers work and how they could benefit your business for cashless tipping, get in touch with us today.

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