Challenge

When Spades’ founders came up with the idea for a dine-in payment solution, their goal was to create a seamless experience for all parties involved. For Spades, this meant quickly onboarding restaurants, and securely and seamlessly moving money between the restaurants that signed onto their platform and their diners. To drive adoption of this innovative, QR code-based solution, Spades also needed to provide a user-friendly payment experience that delivered value for both restaurants and their customers.

Solution

With no time to waste, Spades turned to Stripe and found the ideal solutions in Stripe Checkout and Stripe Connect. Spades was convinced by Stripe’s focus on helping businesses quickly and easily get up and running with proven payment solutions and a simple, strong Know Your Customer (KYC) process. Stripe Connect facilitates multi-party money movement. The startup was also impressed with Stripe Checkout, a pre-built, hosted page optimised for conversion. Checkout allows businesses to easily and securely accept payments online and automatically ensures the right payment allocations go to restaurants and to Spades. Spades also leverages Stripe security levers to provide a seamless one-click experience to pay their bill without the need for a one-time password (OTP). This ensures minimal checkout friction whilst adhering to security thresholds from Stripe and Spades.

Results

Enabled a better experience for restaurants, waiting staff, and diners

Spades integrated Stripe payment solutions in just three days. As a result, it could quickly turn its attention to onboarding restaurants. The first restaurants that adopted Spades quickly saw measurable results. Instead of waiting for the availability of a POS terminal – which averages 1 for every 20 tables in most restaurants – customers are empowered to check out at their convenience. They simply scan the QR code embedded at their table, and they can easily pay the bill, split the payment among multiple people, and tip their server. Waiting staff benefit from 3x higher tips on average and the ability to focus on upselling each table, since they are freed from processing checkout. Plus, as a result of streamlined checkout, these restaurants are turning over two to three more tables per shift, which directly translates to higher revenue of anywhere from 8–20%. In fact, some of Spades’ customers have eliminated their POS hardware – and the associated cost.

Empowered to simplify the payment process in many ways

Spades’ ability to integrate with a range of payment and wallet solutions – including Apple Pay, Google Pay, GrabPay, WeChat Pay, and Alipay – enables restaurants to satisfy a range of diner preferences and, in turn, allows Spades to sign on more restaurants. In addition, Spades provides each restaurant with a customised Dashboard showing online and in-person data. With this data collated in a single Dashboard, restaurants gain better insights into their transactions.

Grew business in more ways than one

By automating processes and handling KYC in as little as 20 minutes with Stripe, Spades is now launching new restaurants at a much faster rate. Calling upon these capabilities, the company is pursuing rapid growth. Spades, which started in the United Arab Emirates, has already launched in Saudi Arabia and is expanding across the Gulf Cooperation Council and neighbouring Southeast Asia markets. Moreover, it is launching in hotels to handle room service and room bill checkout. Additional plans include enabling buy now, pay later and displacing cash on delivery services, along with offering a real-time earn-and-burn proposition for hotel and restaurant loyalty programs.