LevelUp Lands Major Financing Package

Mobile payments for restaurants are an increasingly big deal, and when coupled with mobile ordering tools represent a great way for diners to get their food and carry on with their day in rapid fashion.

LevelUp is a growing force in that sub-market, and recently, it completed a funding round that saw fully $50 million added to its overall tab.

The funding round in question brought together not only JPMorgan Chase—which has been a long-time investor in LevelUp’s operations—but also luminaries like CentroCredit Bank and US Boston to provide extra juice to LevelUp, which is actually in the midst of a growth phase.

Around one million people use LevelUp every month, and with this new investment in place, LevelUp can not only step up its product development operations to that growing market, but also drive a national expansion effort and hire more people to oversee such an operation.

Bringing together a combination of payments, rewards, and analytics systems to provide insight into customer behavior for the issuing restaurants, LevelUp allows customers to place orders at participating restaurants and then pay for those orders in advance.

The information generated can then be incorporated into not only loyalty programs—a certain number of orders automatically generates discounts—but also into customer relationship management (CRM) and other such systems that allow the restaurant to better connect to the customer.

So far, over 200 brands throughout the United States, including figures like the Potbelly Sandwich Shop and the Tropical Smoothie Cafe, use LevelUp in everyday operations.

Restaurants these days face almost unprecedented challenge; between the growing number of competitors and the lowering market of customers planning to eat at home rather than buy food out. The only way to respond to such conditions is to know the customer better than anyone else and deliver the best in customer experience.

Offering mobile payment and ordering options is a great way to do that, and when you incorporate rewards and other programs like LevelUp does, it’s a whole new level of value.

While it likely won’t be seen in the big stores thanks to their internal development, LevelUp might be a part of more places than you’d expect. That’s good news for everyone who wants the convenience mobile ordering and payment offers.