

Ask HN: Would you buy street-food/food-trucks using a credit card? - chirau

I have been contemplating building an app to purchase street food using cards and I am curious whether this is something people would actually use
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beckler
In Atlanta, pretty much all of the mobile food trucks use Square
([https://squareup.com/](https://squareup.com/)). It seems very popular, and
most customers seem to always pay by CC.

What exactly would your app be doing differently?

I've been contemplating an mobile food app as well. This a synopsis of that
idea: If you could get mobile food trucks/vendors to sign up for free (in
order to get some traction), create an app that lets users know what food
trucks are nearby, and then let them order and pay remotely. Make money by
adding a small fee (~$1) when people remotely pay.

Would people use it? I don't know.

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dougbarrett
Same with Los Angeles as well. I can almost guarantee you that Apple will at
some point (possibly later this year?) include an NFC chip in the iPad line-up
with a new app that will allow you to receive payment with Apple ID. Also the
fact that they are making an Android application for Apple Music leads me to
believe they will support Google Wallet or any NFC payment method as well.

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ctdonath
Of course. I rarely carry cash, when I do I'd rather not use it, a CC is
sufficiently secure (from experience), and a vendor having to jump thru
whatever hoops to take CC as payment seems more trustworthy than an anonymous
anyone with a cart.

For better security & privacy, ensure that the transaction device supports
"chipped" cards or, better yet, Apple Pay or other anonymizing technique.

While I deeply despise the notion of a "cashless society", gotta admit it's
incredibly convenient (enough to overcome my objections).

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dragonwriter
Plenty of these type of venues already take CC (mostly using Square); its
pretty clear people would use it, since they already are.

Of course, the question then becomes what does your app offer that incumbents
like Square don't.

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chirau
I want to be more of an aggregator like GrubHub/Seamless with offsite
purchasing. I'm guessing Square you have to be onsite since it is a POS.

~~~
dragonwriter
Square has POS and online ordering services, among others.

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cjbprime
Already do.

