After the Meal, the Credit Card Scanner Is Served
By FLORENCE FABRICANT The New York Times November 21, 2007
THE waiter gives you the bill. You check it and then, right at the table, you swipe your credit card in a portable device. A receipt pops out, you sign it, and you are on your way.
These wireless handheld devices, which save time and are meant to cut down on fraud, have been used in European restaurants for the past 10 years. They were introduced in the United States about two years ago, and they are just inching into use.
In New York next month, Vento Trattoria, part of the B.R. Guest restaurant group, will install a system for processing credit cards at the table. It will be a pilot program, but the company's president, Stephen Hanson, is eager to have it in place.
"Ninety percent of my business is credit cards, and processing them takes too many steps," he said. "Even if it costs money up front you'd save time and motion."
The devices look like calculators and are similar to the credit card gadgets at supermarket checkout counters. They are made by several companies, including VeriFone in San Jose, Calif., whose systems and equipment for credit card transactions are in many American restaurants.
Another company, Cyndigo, based in Fullerton, Calif., has developed a portable credit card scanner not much larger than a BlackBerry that fits neatly into a restaurant check holder.
Grant Drummond, the director of marketing communications for Ingenico in Toronto, which has been selling the systems in Europe and Canada, said that about 2,000 American restaurants are now using his company's system, mainly chain restaurants and places on the West Coast.
Pay-at-table systems quickly gained acceptance in Europe, said Douglas Bergeron, the chairman of VeriFone, because the incidence of credit card fraud and identity theft was greater than in the United States.
"A restaurant is the only remaining place in the retail economy where the card disappears, where you actually hand it over and the transaction is not processed right in front of you," he said. "There is an opportunity for it to be copied and skimmed."
Those who have used the systems in Europe may wonder why it has taken so long for them to show up here.
...