IBM, McDonald’s in U.K. launch new cashless payment solution

London IBM announced it has signed a three year agreement with McDonald's to provide a new cashless payment solution for 1,300 McDonald's owned and franchised restaurants across the United Kingdom and Ireland. IBM will help McDonald's cater to the growing number of customers using credit- and debit-card payments by introducing an improved system that will be operational by the end of 2010.

The IBM solution will allow McDonald's to continue improving customer experience at the counter by increasing the speed, flexibility and security of service. McDonald's existing strong levels of security will be enhanced even further with anti-tamper and fraud detection software installed on hand-held chip and pin devices to help protect customer card payments.

The solution will also help McDonald's find smarter ways to run its day-to-day operations more efficiently by centralizing business processes onto one database enabling automated settlement and reporting. By installing these new processes, McDonald's is also empowering its franchisees, the independent businessmen and women who own and operate the majority of McDonald's restaurants, to view and query their own customer card data so any issues can be quickly resolved.

IBM will provide business and technology consulting services to integrate and maintain the payment solution which is being designed and built around the McDonald's point of sale terminal. Following the launch of the new solution, IBM will host and support McDonald's entire payment system in a secure U.K. data center.

The solution will be based around IBM's StorePay and Sureswitch products to provide a complete payment service that extends from the hand-held chip and pin device in the restaurant through to the backend processing on a pair of highly available IBM System p servers, which are monitored and managed by IBM's UK Infrastructure Management Center.