New Payment Reader at McDonalds?

[BruiserB]

Over the weekend I noticed that my local McDonalds (in Minneapolis, MN) had installed a new type of reader next to the normal credit card terminal with NFC reader. It looks like some sort of Honeywell optical scanner. Anyone have any idea what it is for? Seems like it would be the sort of thing that CurrentC would require, but I haven't heard of McDonalds being part of their rollout. Are there other payment systems that would use this type of reader? All of the terminals at this restaurant had them installed.

 

[tmiw]

I thought it was for the food items they sell in the display case (e.g. the bundt cakes on their breakfast menu), but maybe it could be used for other stuff too.

 

[Sun Baked]

For use with the McDonald's mobile app on your phone, allows you to display coupons on the phone, this reader reads the bar code displayed on the phone to input the code to the register.

 

[BruiserB]

Thanks! Wow, what a waste on McDonalds part. Just downloaded the app and it seems pretty weak. Can't imagine how much they are spending to update all of their registers for something that will get hardly any use. They should at least allow you to enter McDonalds gift card info and pay with it or something.

And what a bunch of clutter on their counters. Too bad they probably decided to install this before Apple got in on the loyalty card/ApplePay link up. Surely they could have used that system to take coupons and payments by NFC.