Company Developing Digital To The Table Card Payment System

We have all probably had it. The feeling you get when suddenly you think, “our server has been gone an awfully long time with my card.” Why? Declined? Added swipe maybe? Took it to the restroom before swiping it? I have a self imposed deadline of just less than a minute till my head is up and I am looking around for our server. Where are they, swiping my card? On their way back. At about 90 seconds I am scooting my chair back to stand up and look. Am I paranoid? Just because I am doesn’t mean someone isn’t running my card through a reader to sell the data later. “70% of credit card skimming happens at restaurants each year since it's one of the few transactions in which our cards leave our sight.”
 
No, to my knowledge I have not had it happen. I have gotten up and walked toward the back looking for my server though. Now a company, Viableware (http://www.viableware.com) is bringing Digital To The Table. They have developed ‘Rails” which looks like those ubiquitous black books for those checks coming to our table. They leave it and you swipe your own card. I am sure if you are not able they can do it for you as well. That is the safety part of it. I like that.

Additionally, they are able to do more for you. Currently being used by Joie de Vivre Hotels in San Francisco and P.F. Chang's in Seattle. There are some really cool features: An auto-tip calc which restaurants can set percentages - but allows custom tip; Bill-splitting up to nine differ ways, equally or by item(s) (college students jump for joy); and you can have your receipt printed or e-mailed to you.

Further, restaurants can add apps so you can hail a cab, notify valet for your car or like the place on your Facebook page. They can put a one question survey about how you liked your experience.

The information is encrypted and never kept on the POS at the restaurant so even of some clever hacker gets into that they can’t get your info.

The complete article can be found here. http://www.fastcompany.com/3001914/restaurant-check-wallet-cuts-waits-waiters-takes-your-data-tip

So is this just a curiosity or are there some local restauranteurs who are interested in using it?

Discuss Freely....

By any chance if you seen the tabletop units they using at Chili's? You can pay the bill from them much like you described including entering the value of tips (their default value is 18%). You can have the receipt printed out from the unit or emailed to you. In addition you can actually order appetizers and desserts directly from the unit. Sounds like the system you described is very similar.

Although you order at the bar when you go to Feast BBQ, they are using an iPad as their POS...the bartender enters your order, swipes your card on it, then flips it around so you can choose the tip and sign. This could easily be done by the waitstaff at the table as well.

[Robin Garr]

Although you order at the bar when you go to Feast BBQ, they are using an iPad as their POS...the bartender enters your order, swipes your card on it, then flips it around so you can choose the tip and sign. This could easily be done by the waitstaff at the table as well.

Lil Cheezers is doing that too, using the Square payment system.

Now we'll only be 10 years behind Europe.

Now we'll only be 10 years behind Europe.

Don't forget that the tipping customs here are much different from those in Europe and add some more complexity to the procedure (customer input of a value). Not that it should have taken that long but.......

(Shaking head)
I dunno... It seems the more complex procedures get the more hack -able it is. I KNOW what the marketing says but it still seems so vulnerable. A former hacker was on NPR a few months ago. He said the real worry was not in using your card at a restaurant but that most ID theft takes happens at places that do extremely high volume cc charges, like gas stations or grocery stores. There the info from an entire weekend is usurped and hundreds of numbers are collected and sold in lots. When asked how much thy usually got for a cc # he said usually between $3-$5 per card. If this is true it seems we would all know more people that have had their ID stolen. I don't know, I am just parroting what he said. Anyone here had their ID stolen?

I've had my debit card information stolen. I went to check my bank balance online one day and was locked out. When I called the bank they said I was $1400 overdrawn ( I had just been paid and knew my balance should have been close to $2000). About 30 debit card transactions came through in less than 5 minutes, ranging from a Ferarri dealership in Milan to a store in California.

It happened the same day as a data breach at Roosters that made the news a few years ago, but I had never been there. As near as I could figure, the hackers obtained my card number from the Playstation network, although this was never confirmed. The bank returned all of the money, but it took about 2 weeks. Luckily I could access my savings account and get spending money that way. My house payment had not cleared at the time, and they honored that as well. The people at the bank indicated that this sort of thing was an everyday occurrence. Since then I only use an American Express card for online purchases.

I do some freelance writing for the banking industry, and it's pretty much a situation where there could be stricter security measures in place, but the cost of implementing them is more that the cost of eating fraudulent transactions. When that balance changes we'll see tighter security.

I've had my debit card information stolen. I went to check my bank balance online one day and was locked out. When I called the bank they said I was $1400 overdrawn ( I had just been paid and knew my balance should have been close to $2000). About 30 debit card transactions came through in less than 5 minutes, ranging from a Ferarri dealership in Milan to a store in California.

It happened the same day as a data breach at Roosters that made the news a few years ago, but I had never been there. As near as I could figure, the hackers obtained my card number from the Playstation network, although this was never confirmed. The bank returned all of the money, but it took about 2 weeks. Luckily I could access my savings account and get spending money that way. My house payment had not cleared at the time, and they honored that as well. The people at the bank indicated that this sort of thing was an everyday occurrence. Since then I only use an American Express card for online purchases.

I do some freelance writing for the banking industry, and it's pretty much a situation where there could be stricter security measures in place, but the cost of implementing them is more that the cost of eating fraudulent transactions. When that balance changes we'll see tighter security.

Scary. Very scary.

Veering off from the restaurant scenario, anyone worried about on-line credit card usage should look into the one-time CC numbers. From a quick google search, Citi, Discover and BoA offer it. Im sure others do too. What it allows you to do is generate a 1-time only CC number, you can even set a dollar limit with it.

You use it once, for a purchase with an online retailer, then it isnt valid. So if their database gets hacked, the hackers are getting useless numbers.

With a smarter card, or a pay by smart phone system, that could even work at the physical payment level, where the smart card and/or smart phone app generates a new number each time. Tap to pay is the future and its already here.

I've had my debit card information stolen. I went to check my bank balance online one day and was locked out. When I called the bank they said I was $1400 overdrawn ( I had just been paid and knew my balance should have been close to $2000). About 30 debit card transactions came through in less than 5 minutes, ranging from a Ferarri dealership in Milan to a store in California.

This is why I will not use or own a debit card. The banks push them on us. Refuse to take them.

Few of us can afford to have our bank accounts frozen for two weeks while the banks sort things out. If your checking account is tied to an overdraft auto-transfer from you savings, or even a credit line, you could really be screwed with various bill payments getting denied. it's only at the grace of the banks that you are even reimbursed.

I still use credit cards for everything. By law, my liability is limited to $50 if my card or number is stolen. Plus, the bank has to worry about recouping their funds, not mine.

It's my profession to know about a lot about this subject, but for liability and reputation reasons, I won't speak from a PCI standpoint because it's not my place. But from a consumer standpoint, there are a few things here that pique my interest. I have in fact had my card number stolen and my account was credited in 2 days - no joke. The bank notified me and handled everything very expediently.

Richard - you mentioned that the bank swallows the breach and "when the balance changes", bank policies might as well - I don't see how that could possibly be the case. The merchants accept payment in the form of a card and they don't ask for identification or match signatures. Doesn't that make them liable for fraudulent purchases? Therefore, the bank withholds the deposit and credits the card holders account. The merchant that accepted the card never gets paid for the purchases due to negligence. The bank also freezes the card and reissues a new one. That card replacement and administrative costs are passed onto the origin of breach, if they can determine that - which in most cases of large harvest, I think they do? And they always have to pay a LOT more than that, because at this point we're talking about the secret service involvement and the costs associated with that, as well as a ton of other potential compromises and card replacements. So in all, the bank is doing what they always do - lending money and charging for it.

The policy changes come from more secured merchant processing and I can't imagine it will be long before we're actually asked to supply identification every time we purchase something with a card. I can't REMEMBER the last time a merchant asked me for ID! I don't have the back of my card signed, and it doesn't say "Ask for ID", because it doesn't matter - they never do. My boss has given me his card to us (a card in a man's name) and written on the back, it clearly states "Ask for ID". They never do.

The payers are the merchants - those where the data was stolen and those where the stolen data was approved.

In my case, the bank never notified me; I found out when I was locked out of my account. I never heard any more about it once it was over with so I really don't know who ended up eating the costs., but I had to make several trips to the bank to get it straightened out.

And no, I didn't mean to say that the banks always swallows the breach; they're happy to pass it back to the merchant whenever possible. Still, it costs the bank something even if they're not paying for the breach itself. I've been told by people in the industry, though, that the main reason we don't have chip-and-pin in the United States is that adopting it at this pioint would cost more than any potential savings.

(Heavy sigh)
CC were such a promising idea, now they cause more problems then they are worth. I have slowly weened myself away from all cc and debit card purchases and use cash only. I do no online purchases except for aps for my iPad. I figure if a cc company can offer flight miles or cash back it's got to be coming out of my pocket somehow anyway.