McDonald’s, Ingenico Get Together for UK and Ireland Mobile Payments

McDonald’s has done a bang-up job of bringing mobile payments to their operations, particularly in the United States. This isn’t only a US job, however, because plenty of McDonald’s outside of the US are into mobile payments as well. In fact, McDonald’s recently announced that it’s turning to Ingenico for its mobile payments operations in the UK and Ireland for the next five years at least.

McDonald’s turned to Ingenico, reports note, for Ingenico’s overall capacity—it handles a lot of payments—as well as its reliability, overall performance, and level of security, all of which are vital to maintaining the best user experience and keeping the lines moving along rapidly.

With mobile payments increasingly in vogue in the UK—about one in three transactions are now done on a contactless basis, according to word from UK finance—being ready to accommodate large amounts of mobile payments will be welcome.

This is especially true given that McDonald’s locations now average around 3.7 million visits per day to the entire chain. This means that, if the numbers hold true, McDonald’s sees around 1.2 million contactless transactions per day as well. That calls for a high-impact system, the kind Ingenico could offer.

Ingenico Group’s senior vice president for commercial and enterprise retail Ian Benn noted “Throughout its history, McDonald’s has been a leader in customer service innovation. Ingenico is very proud to be able to play a part in that story, speeding up service, adding new payment options and staying ahead of the pace.”

Mobile payments and fast food go together quite well, as has already been seen. Orders can be paid for in advance and picked up later, ordered in advance and paid for and picked up there, or ordered, paid for, and picked up there, all with a mobile payments system. With so many ways to use such a setup, there’s also an increased chance of failure. So McDonald’s needed someone who could handle high-volume as well as high-security payments processing.

That someone seems to be Ingenico. While only time will tell if it’s up to the task, everything we know so far suggests that it will be, though we’ll all likely be keeping an eye out for any issues that come up.