McDonalds Finally Introducing Mobile Ordering and Payment

McDonaldsAfter a few stops and starts, McDonalds is reportedly finally preparing to introduce mobile mobile ordering and payment to its restaurants.

According to Business Insider, mobile ordering will roll out next year, starting in the US and expanding to Australia, Canada, France and the UK, and eventually becoming available at 20,000-25,000 restaurants worldwide by 2018.

For one of the worlds largest brands, McDonalds has been remarkably slow to adopt mobile on a global basis. The company only launched its first app in the US last year, offering mobile coupons, and it has been promising a mobile ordering app since last July, when president and CEO Steve Easterbrook first announced the apps launch and claimed order functionality would be added in the near future.

The fast food was testing mobile ordering using a scannable QR code in 22 of its restaurants in Columbus, Georgia, but closed the pilot before a wider roll-out.

In the UK, McDonalds has had an app since 2011, but the App Store rating of the current versions stands at just 1.5 stars. User reviews criticise the app for limited functionality and constantly redirecting to the brands mobile site. “The amount of opportunities being missed here is massive. You could be taking online orders for stores,” wrote one reviewer, TanukiM, who gave the app the lowest possible score of one star.