In restaurants, We need a new way to signal that we're ready to pay

&gt; Phones have displaced paper money and credit cards as the preferred way to pay for a bill at the end of a meal<p>this is 100% unrelatable to me<p>I have never once used my phone to pay in a sit-down restaurant. I have only seen someone else use their phone when forced to, such as due to a forgotten wallet, and with much fussing and apologizing

Ooh,ooh, I know!<p>We can create an app that needs location data and microphone access so that it can automatically sit there and wait for us to say “check please” and it can turn on a BLE beacon that talks to the servers phone, which, running the app, has already linked to the tables phones and recorded the guests orders for the server.<p>The server can access the users tipping history, sort of a restaurant social credit score, and the users get to have their data harvested 24&#x2F;7 to support the app’s seamless automatic functionality! It’s going to be great!

&gt; The waiter brings over the bill, in a black rectangular wallet, and walks away.<p>This is when you pay, just have your card or whatever ready to go. Skip the extra limbo state and leave when you&#x27;re ready.

I&#x27;m fond of New Zealand, where you either pay as you walk out or the waiter brings you a mobile POS. There&#x27;s no awkward &#x27;take my credit card, walk away with it, and bring it back&#x27; moment. It&#x27;s a much better system, and I would love to see it more common in the US.

When the bill arrives you already knew it was coming since you requested it. So you could have simply had your payment method ready. Then you look at the number and pay it. As adults do.<p>To make clear that you want to make the payment immediately in case this wasn&#x27;t already obvious, one could use speech: I&#x27;d like to pay now.<p>That&#x27;s the system.<p>In the exceptional and unlikely scenario where a waiter speeds away upon you wanting to pay, they aren&#x27;t going to care about your green sticker system either.<p>If it takes forever for them to return, I drop cash on the table and leave. I&#x27;m not going to sit around for 20 mins and beg to collect my money.

There&#x27;s a paper bill in there. Place it poking out the top, just like you would have with paper money or a credit card.<p>No need for a new prop when there&#x27;s already one handy.

Here is what I do for credit card, I guess you can do the same for tap to pay with the same efficiency.<p>When the call the waiter to ask for the bill, or when you ask directly when he comes to take out your dishes or ask for dessert, just say directly how you will pay:<p>The bill please, I will pay by card (&#x2F;phone)...

Not everything in life needs to be optimized with some system. Just politely wave at your waiter, wait for them, or pay at the cashier near the exit if you&#x27;re in a hurry. Talk to people. Embrace the little chaos of life and the small imperfections that come with it.

The real legacy is not the payment method, but this tipping culture that should be shutdowned.<p>The world has evolved and moved to decent fixed salaries.<p>Japan: amazing service, perfect food, 0 tips.<p>America: shitty burger joint, rude waiter, 20% tip or they chase you outside.

Some large chains have a miniature payment kiosk at each table. You just pay when you’re done and leave. Very convenient.

I don’t get it. Either say “I’m ready to pay now” when the bill is dropped off, or just flag the server down later when you are ready. What problem are we solving here?

I seem to be alone but I like the places where I order and pay on my phone and then they deliver to the table. For me it is the best experience.

In almost every restaurant and cafe that I frequent in Ukraine, each table has a unique QR code that links to a site with both the menu and an option to pay the bill. The pay option shows the current itemized bill with options to pay with monoPay (a payment service operated by MonoBank which also operate this QR code system) or Apple Pay or iirc Google Pay. Tip can also be paid here (although it’s not pushed on you with dark patterns like in the US and 10% is reasonable). It felt odd at first to just walk out after a meal without having given money to a person but it quickly become my preferred payment method.<p>There is no app to install. WiFi is always available so you don’t even technically need to have a mobile data plan.<p>If you don’t want to use this then you call the waiter over and someone brings the mobile credit card terminal instead.<p>The “how does the waiter know to come and take payment” problem is unique to how restaurants in some countries handle paying the bill.

<i>Phones have displaced paper money and credit cards as the preferred way to pay for a bill at the end of a meal.</i><p>In Europe maybe? I&#x27;ve never seen anyone pay with their phone. Not in big cities and not in rural areas in the US. I will never do financial transactions with my government spy device. To each their own obviously.<p>As for when I am ready to pay, I go to the counter and give them cash or I might use a debit card if I am picking up everyone&#x27;s tab. If they give me grief then I simply do not return to that establishment and they will get negative reviews.

Point at the waiter and wave them over. A very low-tech solution.

In many Asian restaurants, it&#x27;s common to have a cashier near the entrance. Your just pay your bill as you leave.

Related story, In the US, so YMMV:<p>I tend to try to pay in advance when I order so I don’t have to wait 5-10 minutes to get a bill, then have them run off as I grab my payment method of choice, to wait another 5-10 minutes to actually pay.<p>I was a little confused how my requests to pay early seemed to slightly irritate waitstaff. So I asked some restraint owner friends of mine and they mentioned how, depending on the POS configuration, the act of requesting or paying the check (forgot which one) automatically queues up your table availability to the next guest.<p>So I guess, convenience workflow feature for the restaurant host impacts creates an annoyingly rigid behavioral pattern that unexpectedly passes “waiting frustration” on to diners.

Seems like a call-light&#x2F;attendant button (like in healthcare &amp; airlines respectively) would be fairly inexpensive and make dining experiences wildly more efficient. Diners always outnumber servers, it would be nice to just press a button and let them know they&#x27;re needed instead of having to crane your neck around looking for them and trying to get them to notice you so you can ask for your bill (or whatever else you might have needed).

I&#x27;ve only seen this at one place - a Japanese restaurant in Boulder, CO. Each table has a small red button with a weighted base, right next to the soy sauce and cube of extra gari.<p>You press the button, a server appears a few seconds later. Need to order, press the button. Need water, press the button. Need the check, press the button. Need for them to pick up credit card, press the button. I love it; it&#x27;s like a flight attendant call button and I never have to wait for anything.

In EU waiter asks &quot;cash or card?&quot; when you ask for a bill, then brings both bill and the terminal, then you pay with a phone (just like 99% of others) and the whole process is done fast and smooth. No USA&#x2F;Israel nonsense about taking your card to some back room and doing something with it. In fact, I don&#x27;t really remember where my actual plastic cards are. Probably in a wallet, but can be in the desk drawer too, I&#x27;ve never used them for past 2 or 3 years.

It&#x27;s becoming quite common in S Korea for there to be a fixed tablet on a stand at each table. You order from the digital menu and then immediately pay with the integrated PoS. If there&#x27;s no tablet you pay on your way out. There&#x27;s a button at each table to summon the waiter. No tips.<p>Japan has ticket vending machines in many restaurants. You prepay and order at the front of the restaurant, it prints a little ticket, and you give that to the waiter or kitchen.

QR codes are great for this. Optional, and let&#x27;s me Irish goodbye when I&#x27;m done with my food.<p>I&#x27;ve been to several restaurants with this.

Sorry what&#x27;s the actual problem here?

Chili&#x27;s solved it... I don&#x27;t like the restaurant too much but their payment experience rocks. There is a payment gadget at the table, so you use that to pay and simply walk away without talking to the waiter.

Very strange. Not only do I never see people using a phone being used to pay at full service restaurants but what happened to the lowest-tech solution of all - wave at the nearest person to come over and settle the bill.

I always wanted a system with an NFC chip embedded into the receipt holder. Just tap my phone, pull up my receipt on a web page, and checkout with Apple Pay.

Orr just put the mobile payment terminal on the table, with the amount, a tip prompt without a hovering waiter, and leave when you&#x27;re done paying.

&quot;I&#x27;ve tried laying my phone over the receipt, but it just doesn&#x27;t work.&quot;<p>Nevertheless, this is the answer, and much better than the proposed colored card.

in turkiye, most of the places bring the &quot;black rectangular wallet&quot; open; so you can fill it in with cash&#x2F;credit card and then close it. when it is closed it queues that your payment is ready. so there is an already established non-verbal queue without color codes or so. it also follows the verbal usage of open check and closed check per se.

We have more land more qrcodes imprinted to tables in France. It usually works :)<p>This way you pay on your phone and just show it when leaving.

Push your plate two inches away. It is almost imperceptible but you’d be surprised what the eye will notice.

At Case Bonita in Denver, you have a flag on your table you can raise to signal to the waiter to come over.

when the waiter first comes to the table, you listen for their name and remember it. at the end of the meal, you raise your hand, state their name and when they look your way, cross your two index fingers to indicate &quot;close out&quot;.

I&#x27;m ready to pay when I get up and walk over to the cashier.

&gt; The waiter asks if you want dessert, but you decline... and feeling somewhat guilty you hurriedly justify this rebuke by explaining how you over-ordered<p>Is the article meant to be a light-hearted little piece that is not meant to be taken seriously? Or is this &quot;guilt&quot; for not ordering dessert a real thing??

Bring a credit card.