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Comment by xupybd | Hacker News Reader

Here in NZ it is literally easier to pay people via bank transfer. If I want cash I have to get a $20 out of an ATM. If I owe someone $5, I then have to get $20 out and spend some to break the $20. Or I can get their bank account, enter it into my banks phone app and bam in seconds the money is transferred, next time I have their account saved. But it wasn't that hard because they had a banking app on their phone and knew how to send it to me in an SMS.

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Commonwealth Bank in Australia lets you transfer money with just a mobile phone number. I literally open the app, authenticate with Touch ID, select someone from my contacts and it just works (depending on their bank and if they have their mobile number associated).

> Here in NZ it is literally easier to pay people via bank transfer.

Alas, I always struggle to explain it to people from primitive banking cultures.

I think even the amount to transfer and who to transfer to should be automated. The app should just know who visited the restaurant and the menu would already have the prices. You just choose what to order/buy and it's charged, just like on Amazon etc. Once we abolish tips everything will become automatic!!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but do you mean basically ordering your food on your phone?

That destroys the human element, which is a big part of the restaurant/hospitality experience.

There are products out there that let you order through a tablet at your table, and also apps that let staff use an iphone instead of a notepad, but it takes away a large part of the experience.

It's fine for places like McDonald's (who now have touch screen ordering in some countries, like New Zealand and Australia), but if I went to Bouchon Bistro, I wouldn't want to be ordering through a tablet.

That McDonald's style kiosk ordering takes away the human element I can understand, but I don't see why would that be the case if the waitstaff is using a digital notepad instead of a paper one (I'm talking about something like a Noteslate).

Well, I wouldn't mind if most restaurants had robots instead of waiters and digital food ordering (like tablet on a table). Human element I usually need is people I came with, not waiting staff, I don't remember when I had any useful input from them (they don't know my taste and their goal is different from mine). Nice looking smiling human per hall, who can come up to our table once and ask if everything's ok would be enough. Maybe in top fancy restaurants it's not the case, but 90% of restaurants aren't in that category where I live.

I have stopped using my local McDonalds (in the UK) when they introduce stupid screens

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