OpenTable For Android Now Lets You Pay For Meals From Your Phone

VENTUREBEAT: Android users can now pick up the check for dinner with a little extra panache. Restaurant booking app OpenTable has long promised a mobile payments option, and today it’s coming to Android users.

There are already a number of mobile payment players that have descended on the restaurant scene, including startups Cover and Dash. But where OpenTable stands to shine as a payment option for diners is in the seamless integration of its software at the table and in the front of house.

In addition to its reservation app, OpenTable also provides restaurants with front-of-house software that allows a maître d’ or hostess to assign reservations and walk-in diners to a seating chart. If a diner chooses to pay for his or her meal in OpenTable’s app, then OpenTable can communicate that decision to the front of house, which can in turn alert the waiter.

Other mobile payment apps have given restaurants additional hardware, including beacons and tablets, to facilitate the same sort of seamless experience for diners. But what will be attractive to all of the 32,000 restaurants that already use OpenTable is that they won’t need to adopt additional hardware or software to start accepting mobile payments.

To pay, diners open the app, click on their check, and swipe across the screen to pay. Though simple, OpenTable’s app is still a work in progress — for instance, users cannot split checks.

The app rolled out to iOS earlier this month.