Challenge

QikServe founder Daniel Rodgers took his children to lunch one day at a London restaurant and faced a dilemma: he could leave his children unattended at a table while he got in line to place their order, or he could bring them with him and risk losing their table during the lunch rush – a stressful situation either way. After the harried lunch outing, Rodgers wished there were an app that could enable simple mobile ordering. In 2011, he founded QikServe to fulfil that market need.

Through QR code ordering, QikServe allows restaurant guests to easily order food and drinks from their table. Since its founding, the business has expanded to provide self-service options across channels, enabling businesses in the hospitality industry to offer convenient ways to place orders and pay their bills. Hospitality operators have found that QikServe solutions help increase cheque size, reduce waiting times, and increase operational efficiency.

In 2021, QikServe launched QikServe Payments to easily manage payments, drive conversion with a variety of payment options, and view comprehensive reporting within a single dashboard. To scale quickly, QikServe needed to speed up onboarding for customers locally and internationally. It also wanted the platform to deliver faster payout processing to give customers access to their funds as quickly as possible. Finally, QikServe sought a solution for fraud protection that could help safeguard its customers even amid rapid growth.

Solution

QikServe’s relationship with Stripe began in 2015 when the company implemented Stripe Payments to provide businesses with integrated payments. QikServe expanded its relationship with Stripe for the launch of QikServe Payments.

“Because we already had a relationship with Stripe, we understood their technology stack was extremely strong from an onboarding perspective in comparison to other players in the payments industry,” says Lesley Corr, business manager for QikServe Payments. “And Stripe offered a lot of out-of-the-box technology that we could utilise as part of our go-to-market strategy.”

Using Stripe Connect Express, QikServe has sped up the onboarding process for businesses across borders, allowing them to get up and running quickly and to offer multiple payment methods, including cards and digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay. The company has since added Stripe Elements to make more payment options available, including local payment methods, such as iDEAL, Bancontact, Cartes Bancaires, Sofort, EPS, and Przelewy24. Connect also enables local presentment, allowing QikServe’s customers to show prices in their customers’ local currency, helping businesses grow across borders.

Through QikServe’s Stripe integration, QikServe Payments has provided businesses with consolidated transaction data and detailed reporting in their QikServe dashboard, allowing them to access all of their key data without needing to refer to multiple sources. “We see that as a huge benefit for our operators,” Corr says.

With Connect Express, QikServe Payments has offered faster payout schedules, helping businesses access their funds more quickly – often in as little as one day.

QikServe worked with the Stripe professional services team to build the integration; the team offered thorough guidance and reduced the time to launch. As part of the process, the professional services team provided workshops on defining funds flows and pricing strategy, using IC+ (interchange-plus pricing) and reporting on fees, adapting the QikServe platform for tax in the United Kingdom, and creating a swift merchant onboarding process.

QikServe Payments initially launched without a fraud protection system, but when the QikServe team saw an uptick in fraud, the company added Stripe Radar for Fraud Teams to build QikServe Payments Fraud Protection. Built directly into Stripe, the solution requires zero development work, detects and blocks fraud automatically, and allows QikServe to write fraud rules tailored to its clients’ needs.

Results

QikServe Payments sees 3x businesses onboarded due to faster onboarding time

With Stripe, QikServe Payments has onboarded customers locally and across the globe within days. In many cases, onboarding takes only minutes, and new businesses can start accepting payments the same day. This quick, simple onboarding process has helped QikServe Payments to grow quickly, tripling merchant onboarding in a 12-month period and growing processing volumes by 856% within the first year of market launch.

QikServe Payments has processed about two million transactions on behalf of businesses in less than two years since its launch with Stripe and has seen an overall authorisation rate of 99%.

Reduced payout time ensures businesses can quickly access their funds

Stripe products have enabled QikServe Payments to offer several benefits to customers: businesses using QikServe Payments can offer a variety of payment methods to help boost conversion and improve customer experience. They can get comprehensive reporting and sales data all within their QikServe dashboard, increasing operational efficiency. And QikServe is able to offer a faster payout schedule to give businesses access to their money as quickly as possible.

QikServe plans to add more capabilities to its integration, including Link, a Stripe solution that enables a fast and safe checkout experience, to help further increase conversion and add convenience for businesses’ customers. It also plans to use Stripe Terminal to power its kiosk offering for in-store payments.

Radar quickly curbs QikServe’s incidents of fraud and reduces fraud to 0.01%

With QikServe Payments Fraud Protection powered by Radar for Fraud Teams, QikServe saw an immediate reduction in fraud and continues to experience fraud rates close to zero. The Stripe solution allows QikServe to select a risk tolerance that aligns with its business model. Using historical transaction data, QikServe can experiment with modelling to see how different rule changes might affect the business. These capabilities have helped the platform refine its fraud protection and fraud rules and achieve extremely low fraud rates.

Professional services engagement saves time, leads to smooth implementation

Working with the Stripe professional services team, QikServe launched its integration for QikServe Payments within four months. Professional services worked closely with QikServe developers and offered guidance and best practices to help QikServe get the most benefit from Stripe’s product suite. “Their advice and direction was critical in avoiding pitfalls that would have undoubtedly slowed down development and rollout of QikServe Payments,” Corr says.