PREPS: Promotional Restaurant Payment System using Blockchain Technologies

Abstract

In recent decades, an increasing number of people dining out has caused the restaurant industry in Hong Kong to rapidly grown up, which has brought about a fierce competition between restaurant owners promoting their restaurants by introducing a new menu, offering discounts for meal deals or some coupons in order to attract customers and encourage their future visits, which, however, does not seem effective enough to convert such a floating population into the actual payments. Not only that, a daily fluctuation in the number of visits for different timeslots unique to the food service industry has been a nuisance to restaurant hosts in the determination of the number of employees to be hired for serving as well as the estimation of waiting times for ordering, which is a key determinant of the quality of service. From an idea of membership subscriptions provided by credit card issuers, which enable card holders to enjoy a discount in multiple restaurants in partnership at a cost of paying monthly fees, in this paper, we propose a new payment system based on blockchain technologies which not only simplifies the traditional ordering procedures, to a great extent, along with the real-time order tracking and cancellation but also provides a consensus-driven platform for restaurant owners to design cooperative and location-based discount promotion schemes on their own without the need of external payment agents. Such joint discount offers would be economically appealing to customers, particulary, some of whom are on a tight budget, having no choice but to regularly dine out for reasons of the time constraint and therefore suffering from the acculumlation of dining fees, which would eventually become a win-win solution for both parties.