VooDoo BBQ & Grill is a New Orleans-based restaurant with 13 locations around Louisiana – and it has just signed up with mobile marketing/commerce company Mobibucks to allow customers to pay with just their mobile phone numbers.
What’s the story?
Mobibucks is an interesting mobile commerce service, in that you don’t need your mobile phone to use it. All you need is your mobile phone number, and a unique 4-digit PIN that you can get when you register with Mobibucks (which you can do at the counter in VooDoo BBQ). How it works is this:
- You enter your mobile number and your PIN at the check-out in the restaurant.
Actually, that’s it. It’s a one-step process. Once you enter your number and PIN, you’ve paid. You don’t actually need to bring your phone with you, and you don’t your wallet or any cash. It also allows you to redeem any coupons, take advantage of any special offers, and do anything that VooDoo would usually do for a customer that pays with cash.
What’s the deal?
VooDoo is running the service out on an initial two-restaurant run. It won’t just be using the mobile payment part of the service – it’s also taking advantage of the marketing options that Mobibucks can provide. So customers who have opted in can receive special offers via SMS. To redeem those special offers, they just have to go to the restaurant and pay using their Mobibucks PIN. And those offers don’t have to be sent out via SMS – the special offer can be printed on traditional advertising as well.
Tony Avila, CEO of VooDoo BBQ & Grill says “going mobile just makes sense today. Mobibucks leads the market in terms of an easy to use solution offering for mobile marketing. Not only is their technology top class, but the fact that all is needed is a cell phone number and a PIN is key to making mobile easy for our customers.”
What we think?
I like the Mobibucks offering in terms of simplicity, but there are two potential weaknesses in the system:
The PIN number: entering your mobile number and PIN requires the use of a special Mobibucks keypad. While that’s no problem for the consumer, it’s a potential block to new business clients. Installing new hardware at every retail location isn’t something a merchant wants to have to do.
Cash upload: using this service requires the consumer to upload cash to a Mobibucks account. This can be annoying to the shopper because Mobibucks can’t be spent everywhere. In fact, there’s a list of Mobibucks retail partners and it’s not very big. So a consumer will find that the cash they’ve placed in that account is basically useless except in an extremely limited number of locations.
