Restau­rants in T&T and Bar­ba­dos are set to of­fer cus­tomers faster and more con­ve­nient pay­ment ex­pe­ri­ences fol­low­ing the launch of a new dig­i­tal pay­ment so­lu­tion by Pow­er­tranz and Mas­ter­card.

The com­pa­nies an­nounced the roll­out of Pow­er­tranz’s “Pay at the Ta­ble” plat­form, a sys­tem de­signed to al­low restau­rants to ac­cept se­cure con­tact­less pay­ments di­rect­ly at the din­ing ta­ble us­ing com­pat­i­ble An­droid de­vices, while al­so pro­vid­ing cus­tomers with the op­tion of mak­ing pay­ments through QR codes.

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­nies, the ini­tia­tive aims to im­prove the din­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for cus­tomers while help­ing restau­rants stream­line op­er­a­tions and re­duce the need for ad­di­tion­al pay­ment hard­ware.

The so­lu­tion con­nects the cus­tomer jour­ney from or­der­ing through to check­out, al­low­ing pay­ments to be processed more ef­fi­cient­ly and re­duc­ing wait­ing times for guests.

In a re­lease se­nior vice-pres­i­dent of Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment at Pow­er­tranz, El­dred Gar­cia, said restau­rants and hos­pi­tal­i­ty busi­ness­es are in­creas­ing­ly seek­ing tech­nol­o­gy that im­proves cus­tomer ser­vice with­out dis­rupt­ing ex­ist­ing op­er­a­tions.

“Through our part­ner­ship with Mas­ter­card, we are help­ing restau­rants mod­ernise the din­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and con­nect or­der­ing and pay­ments in a more seam­less way,” Gar­cia said.

The launch comes as busi­ness­es across the Caribbean con­tin­ue to adopt more dig­i­tal pay­ment so­lu­tions to meet chang­ing con­sumer ex­pec­ta­tions and grow­ing de­mand for con­tact­less trans­ac­tions.

The com­pa­nies said their part­ner­ship sup­ports the hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor’s tran­si­tion to­ward more dig­i­tal, ef­fi­cient and cus­tomer-fo­cused ser­vice mod­els, with Mas­ter­card play­ing a strate­gic role in bring­ing the so­lu­tion to mar­ket.

Coun­try man­ag­er for Eng­lish Caribbean at Mas­ter­card, Dal­ton Fowles, added that con­sumers in­creas­ing­ly ex­pect tech­nol­o­gy to sim­pli­fy every­day ex­pe­ri­ences, in­clud­ing din­ing out.

He not­ed that the part­ner­ship is in­tend­ed not on­ly to im­prove con­ve­nience for din­ers but al­so to make it eas­i­er for mi­cro, small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es to adopt dig­i­tal pay­ment ac­cep­tance tools and op­er­ate more ef­fi­cient­ly.

A key com­po­nent of the roll­out is Pow­er­tranz’s ex­ist­ing net­work across the re­gion.

The com­pa­ny said it is in­te­grat­ed with more than 20 banks and pay­ment proces­sors op­er­at­ing in 30 coun­tries, al­low­ing restau­rants to con­nect the Pay at the Ta­ble plat­form with sys­tems and tech­nolo­gies al­ready in use.

The com­pa­nies be­lieve the so­lu­tion would help restau­rants and hos­pi­tal­i­ty op­er­a­tors de­liv­er faster, more se­cure and con­ve­nient pay­ment ex­pe­ri­ences while sup­port­ing broad­er dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion across the sec­tor.

The launch al­so re­sponds to grow­ing con­sumer de­mand for seam­less pay­ment ex­pe­ri­ences and in­creased use of con­tact­less pay­ment meth­ods.

With more than 25 years of ex­pe­ri­ence, Pow­er­tranz pro­vides pay­ment gate­way ser­vices to mer­chants across the Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca.

The Bermu­da-head­quar­tered com­pa­ny serves more than 15,000 busi­ness­es, process­es over 60 mil­lion trans­ac­tions an­nu­al­ly and holds PCI DSS Lev­el 1 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for pay­ment se­cu­ri­ty.

Mas­ter­card, mean­while, op­er­ates in more than 200 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries, pro­vid­ing a range of dig­i­tal pay­ment prod­ucts and ser­vices aimed at mak­ing trans­ac­tions more se­cure, ac­ces­si­ble and ef­fi­cient for con­sumers, busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ments.