Rooam Offers Mobile-Quick Payments for Hospitality Industry

A night out is the kind of thing that sounds like a great idea for a lot of people, but isn’t always that easy to carry out in the end.

For those who offer the facilities for a night out, keeping track of all those people and making sure they settle up isn’t any easier. That part, however, may change thanks to Rooam, a new mobile payment system specifically geared for the bar, restaurant and other “night-out” operations.

Rooam is a fairly simple prospect, currently available on both Apple’s app store and Google Play. So far, it’s been picked up by some fairly substantial operations, though mainly focused on the Washington, DC area right now. Mike Isabella Concepts, Jose Andres’ ThinkFoodGroup and several others are in, including such noteworthy DC establishments as Zaytinya, Bluejacket, Public Bar and more.

Users can turn to Rooam to pay for food and drinks immediately, without the need to wait for attention from a server, bartender or otherwise. The user can even run a continuous tab throughout the night, and then settle up at the end of the night with a one-click “close tab” feature. Rooam locations, meanwhile publish live events, which makes it easier to discover just where the party is that night.

Plus, since it’s all mobile-connected, those who put it to work in a bar or restaurant can use it as fodder for analytics ventures, analyzing a night’s receipts to find out what was popular, what didn’t work out so well, and what should be done going forward. Knowing what people like and don’t is a great way to maximize opportunity and prevent waste, which goes toward greater profitability.

Growing numbers of smartphone users eager for a night out all but guarantees that mobile payments will be, on some level, part of the equation for some time to come. Even if the market for such systems weren’t on the rise, the ancillary values of improved business intelligence certainly couldn’t hurt.

All these factors together make mobile payments systems like Rooam a great new feature, and seeing this in more bars and restaurants shouldn’t be too much longer out.