OpenTable Begins Testing Mobile Payments
OpenTable, the world's largest online reservation service, lets users book a restaurant reservation with its smartphone app or Web site. Now the company is getting ready to take the next step and let diners pay for the meal with its app, too.
Context & Ripple Effects
OpenTable has built its position as the world's largest online reservation service on a single transaction — booking the table — and this test extends its app past that boundary to settling the check. The move drew same-day pickups from AllThingsD, The Next Web, Engadget, Gizmodo and Digital Trends, unusual breadth for a pilot announcement and a signal of how much attention rides on whether the reservations leader can own the whole dining transaction.
There is no prior in-corpus history of OpenTable experimenting with payments, so this test is the starting point of the arc rather than a step in one; what matters analytically is that a company whose leverage comes from sitting between diners and restaurants is inserting itself into the moment money actually changes hands.
First-order effects
- Diners at participating restaurants can close out their meal inside the OpenTable app instead of handing over a card, making the app present for the entire visit rather than just the booking.
- Participating restaurants add OpenTable as an intermediary in the payment flow, trading a slice of control at the table for integration with the reservation system they already run.
Second-order effects
- If payment sticks, OpenTable's switching costs rise on both sides: restaurants get bookings and settlement from one vendor, while diners have one more reason to book — and pay — through the app rather than by phone or directly.
- Payment processors and point-of-sale vendors serving restaurants now compete with a reservations platform for the check, forcing them to argue on cost and integration against a player that owns the customer relationship before the meal starts.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward reservation platforms becoming full-stack restaurant commerce layers — booking, payment and eventually other services bundled through one app — with the platform that owns the table relationship best placed to extend further.
- It also foreshadows pressure on how such platforms charge restaurants: once a gatekeeper touches both the reservation and the payment, its take of each covers becomes the natural flashpoint for restaurant pushback.
The trend: Restaurant technology platforms are extending from single-function intermediaries into full-stack services, with OpenTable's payment test marking the step from owning the booking to owning the transaction.