For several years now, digital ordering company Olo has had its sights set on capturing not only online orders, but also orders at the drive-thru, the counter and the table.
It took a big step toward that goal Tuesday when it announced an integration between its payments service, Olo Pay, and FreedomPay, one of the world’s largest payment gateways for card-present transactions. FreedomPay works with more than 1,000 POS and payment systems.
That means that restaurants that use FreedomPay payment terminals will be able to easily start using Olo Pay to process those card taps and swipes, regardless of what POS system they have. That applies to the majority of Olo's more than 700 existing customers, the company said.
It was made possible after Stripe, Olo’s underlying processor for digital payments, announced an integration with FreedomPay in October.
Olo Pay allows restaurants to process payments and collect detailed data from those transactions. When combined with Olo’s marketing product, Engage, that data can be compiled into customer profiles and used for marketing purposes. Olo Pay also promises strong authorization, fraud and chargeback rates.
Though the bulk of Olo Pay transactions today are digital, Olo hopes it can also capture the 82% of restaurant transactions that occur in-person with a credit card, which will give restaurants a more unified view of their customers.
“By processing the remaining 82% of on-premise transactions, we're uniquely positioned to provide restaurants with a 360-degree view of their guests by combining the newly captured in-store data with the digital order data they already have from our online ordering,” Olo CEO Noah Glass said in a statement.
Olo launched Olo Pay three years ago and the service has been growing quickly. But it has a long runway ahead of it. In 2024, Olo expected to process $2.5 billion in sales through Olo Pay, which was just a fraction of the $160 billion that flowed through Olo’s platform last year.
Through a partnership with payment gateway Adyen, Olo has integrated Olo Pay with a handful of POS systems and kiosk providers for card-present transactions. Teaming up with FreedomPay will greatly expand its opportunity there.
New York-based Olo works with more than 700 restaurant chains with about 85,000 total locations. Together they account for about 16% of all U.S. restaurant sales.
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