Challenge

Stevan Premutico, me&u’s founder, saw a business opportunity when he realised it was faster to hail a taxi than to order a beer in a busy pub. The company set out to give guests a faster, easier way to order drinks so venue operators could keep guests happy and capture previously lost revenue, because guests spend up to 30% more when using me&u. But it needed a payments solution that accepted a variety of payment methods, including Apple Pay and Google Pay, integrated with countless POS and ticketing solutions, and accommodated venue operators’ financial and reporting needs. me&u also needed a trusted payments partner that eased scalability as it moved to expand to other regions.

“More than half of all Australians tap onto our platform, so once we hit that scale, we wanted to explore expanding outside Australia to solve these problems in other markets,” explained Katrina Barry, chief executive officer at me&u. “Flexibility was key, too, given the international variances in compliance, payments methods, gateways, and more.”

Solution

me&u was adding as many as 50 new venues per day as pandemic lockdowns ended, growing to over 1,400 operators running on its legacy payments infrastructure. As me&u worked to manage growth in Australia while preparing for expansion, the company realised that international compliance could prove tricky. After evaluating payments vendors, me&u selected Stripe.

“Stripe has the payments infrastructure and expertise, coupled with a startup mentality to give us everything we need and move at the same fast pace we move,” said Barry. “Many of the competitors we looked at had six-month product release cycles, which simply didn’t work for us. We needed a partner that was going to help us ship products in weeks, not months.”

Beyond just its payments capabilities, me&u chose Stripe for flexibility and speed. me&u differentiates itself on its ability to integrate with the various POS systems used across the industry and to get drinks to guests quickly while helping staff manage order flow and owners manage cash flow. It uses Stripe Connect as the fastest and easiest way to integrate payments into its platform.

Results

Using Stripe, me&u was able to quickly migrate its customers to a flexible, scalable payments platform that integrates with POS and accepts nearly any payment method guests want to use. Internally, the company trusted compliance to Stripe, eliminating the need to develop the technical expertise or add the compliance resources to handle its global growth ambitions.

2–3 months to deploy Stripe Connect

me&u needed flexibility and speed, and Stripe delivered on both while offering global payments scale, compliance management, and more.

Barry said, “We had just two or three developers working on the project, and they were able to get Stripe rolled out in two or three months. Our developers thought the API documentation was really easy to follow, and appreciated being able to switch easily from sandbox to production environments to test as they built and accelerate product development.”

Frictionless experience for guests, staff, and venue owners

Stripe provided the infrastructure for me&u to easily transition its more than 1,400 operators, simplify its global expansion, and streamline the experience of ordering and delivering food and beverages.

Barry said, “We had over 99% of our accounts migrated to Stripe in just six weeks. It was astonishing and really, really fast. And, guests could easily use whatever payment method they preferred, even as we expanded to new countries. Stripe handled it all. We didn’t even have to think about it.”

Global scale to support growth and compliance

me&u had to work quickly to keep up with the growing demand for its “tap, order, pay” solution. As it expanded beyond Australia and into the UK and US, it didn’t want to add the resources and expertise to manage compliance in house. Instead, me&u lets Stripe handle compliance, even across regions.

Natalie Housson, chief financial officer at me&u, said, “I love that we can rely on Stripe Connect’s expertise in handling Know Your Customer (KYC), compliance, and other checks to ensure we bring venues onboard quickly and safely. We could have built that ourselves, but it wouldn’t have been efficient and it would have taken focus away from our core business. I trust Stripe to handle compliance for us.”