Did somebody say PayPal? It looks like McDonald’s did, as the fast-food giant announced this month that they would integrate PayPal both into their mobile and online ordering service. The announcement comes after a 2012 pilot (which we reported on here), and will extend to include all of McDonald’s in-store ordering machines by the end of the year.
The announcement comes just after Payleven, a mobile PoS provider announced they would be launching in France, and with competitors like Adyen looking to expand from online payments to Point of Sales. Of course, with PayPal’s vast history of managing payments and existing user-base, it is a natural fit for a company like McDonald’s to choose them over a smaller payments player.
While McDonald’s operates independently in France, there is no doubt that this partnership has been spurred on both sides by the Starbucks investment in US payments player Square last year, which saw Starbucks integrate Square into 7000 of its stores after investing $25 Million (source:WSJ).
McDonald’s in France has always been ahead of the fast-food curve – they rolled out McCafé first, they virtually destroyed the local (Quick) and international (Burger King) competition in France, and they’ve managed to create a brand that is not just cheap, quickly-consumable food, but rather, convenient & (somewhat) quality food, though it comes at a price.
On PayPal’s side, this represents a huge leap in its efforts to be present on the physical side of the payments world – PayPal here has not seen as much growth as they would’ve likely wanted, and this may be the start of a new transition, as more fast-food chains come online like McDonald’s has done.