Domino's adds Google Wallet function to Android app

Domino’s Pizza has expanded its mobile payment options by integrating Google Wallet into its Android smartphone app.

Google’s mobile wallet functionality allows users to store debit and credit cards, as well as loyalty cards from retailers, on their Android-powered phones to pay electronically for transactions.

“This is yet another way Domino’s is using technology to improve our customer experience,” Patrick Doyle, chief executive of Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Domino’s, said in a statement. “Google Wallet is a great technology that allows customers even more flexibility and convenience when it comes to paying for their Domino’s orders.”

Through June 15, any customer who orders at least $10 using the Android ordering app and selects the “Buy with Google” option to pay using Google Wallet will receive a free order of Domino’s new menu item, Specialty Chicken, which was introduced this month.

The chain of about 10,800 pizza restaurants worldwide has been steadily extending its digital-ordering capabilities for months, most recently with the Easy Order platform on the voice-activated SYNC system in Ford automobiles. That ordering system integrates the Pizza Profiles platform, which Domino’s introduced last September to save customers’ payment information and favorite orders so that their preferences can be leveraged into personalized offers and faster ordering of future pizzas.

The competition for convenient digital-ordering methods integrated into popular platforms continues to intensify in the pizza segment and in the industry at large. Pizza Hut has not only extended its ordering capabilities to the XBox Live gaming network, but last month it also unveiled the test of an interactive table at which customers can order and customize their pizzas, pay and play a few arcade games.

Executives from those two chains, as well as from Papa John’s — which was the first among the three largest brands to offer online ordering systemwide and to have an online loyalty program — all have said their mix of sales from digital ordering continues to grow and is approaching 50 percent.

Elsewhere in the restaurant industry, Wendy’s and Burger King have begun offering mobile payment, while McDonald’s continues to test a mobile solution that would include online ordering, payment and loyalty.

Starbucks Coffee and Panera Bread also have made mobile ordering part of their plans for improving operations, throughput and customer service.

Domino’s operates or franchises about 5,000 locations in the United States and more than 5,600 restaurants in 70 international markets.

Contact Mark Brandau at [email protected].
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