JOEY Restaurants Rolls Out JOEY Pay Platform

If you’re not familiar with JOEY Restaurants, it’s kind of a shame.

Started in Canada in 1992, JOEY Restaurants seemed eager to intermingle the familiar with the unexpected, and that’s a philosophy that seems to go beyond the menu.

Now, it’s in their new mobile payment app, the JOEY Pay system.

JOEY Pay is available only on iPhone right now, and allows users to input a six-digit code at the bottom of a bill.

Once input, guests can then pay using several different credit cards, or JOEY Restaurants gift cards as available and connected to a user profile.

Once successfully concluded, users get a notice that confirms successful payment. Afterward, users can track receipts for later reference, especially useful for those who do a lot of entertaining for business.

It’s fairly simple, if somewhat underpowered. The app seems to focus only on payment, a development that may not sit well with users who are already fairly well inundated with mobile payment apps.

There’s certainly a lot of room for JOEY Pay to ramp up its options and deliver more value for the user. Incorporating reservation systems in the app, or advance ordering, would certainly go a long way here and give users more to work with.

This is fairly standard stuff, and I can’t even spot a rewards system incorporated in here. A free appetizer for every five completed bills paid certainly would work well.

There are so many mobile payment apps out there, from device makers and banks and individual retail shops and even mobile carriers in some cases.

For a new mobile payment option to really stand out, it needs to just offer more than payments, and right now, JOEY Pay doesn’t seem to be doing that.

It certainly can, and it will likely still get some users no matter what it offers, or fails to offer.

It has a real opportunity to ratchet up its presence and get more users interested by offering an experience as unique as its menu. In its current form, it likely won’t pull that off.