foodora case study: Growing with mobile payment methods

Alexandru Dorobantu is the Payments Manager at foodora. Each day brings complex payment challenges under tight time constraints. And he loves it.

“Our customers are hungry. We have to process the payment, check for fraud and deliver, all in under 30 minutes. If we mess up, it can cost us tens of thousands of dollars per minute.” 

We sat down with Alexandru to understand how he and his team use mobile payment methods to keep the orders flowing and the customers happy.

“Today people want to order food on the go, on their way home, even when they’re in the park. Wherever they are, we need to be there too. Which makes mobile a crucial channel for us.

To make the process even easier, we support mobile payment methods like Apple Pay. iPhone users simply click ‘pay’, and the card is charged. We’ve seen a lot of success with this in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, Europe, and Canada. We’re thinking about adding Google Pay as well.

The payment needs to be invisible. We don’t want customers redirected to an external page; we want them to do everything in one place, with as few actions as possible. 

Adyen’s SDK lets us process cards and mobile payment methods without redirecting the customer, so everything happens in-app.

Adyen also lets us tokenise the customers’ cards so they can pay with one click. This is helpful since conversions are much higher if the customer doesn’t have to enter card details every time."

“foodora was built to scale. We wanted to grow from one city in one market to 40 cities in 10 markets – in a year.

To do this successfully, localisation is crucial. This means language localisation, address localisation and, of course, payment localisation. Adyen has been our partner from the beginning. It has the scale and global reach to help us enter new markets quickly with local payment methods.

We use Adyen as a processor and acquirer. Operating in many markets across Europe, it’s helpful to do everything with just one contract and one platform. This gives us visibility into every part of the payment flow, which means less work for us and better results.

Related: Learn more about Adyen Global Acquiring

Adyen is continuously working on new and innovative ways to increase its acquiring potential. As a payments manager, this is something I really value."

“We rely on our technology partners to keep us one step ahead. 

Adyen is always working to add new payment methods and support new functionalities as the market dictates. So we don’t have to wait for half a year of development to get the latest innovations. If we have a specific need, Adyen will work with us to find a solution.

Of course, a big focus for us now is PSD2 in Europe. Adyen for Platforms will play a big role in ensuring we’re compliant both now and into the future.

For me, it isn’t about the fancy stuff – the mobile developments, the new-age voice recognition, or whatever. After all, a transaction is a transaction in the backend. And this is what Adyen does really well. It captures the payment and settles it into our account and I can track its progress every step of the way. I know what the interchange fee is, and I have all the reporting I need. This is really helpful, and I don’t think many payments partners can do it."

Joe Gemayel, Global Chief Product Officer, foodora:

foodora started off in Munich. They started with 30 restaurants. The founders were doing the deliveries themselves. foodora has grown from being in one city, with 30 restaurants in one market to being in 40+ cities, 9000 restaurants in more than 10 markets.

People want to order on the go. They want to be able to order before they get home, they want to be able to order when they’re in the park. Whenever they want food, we want to be there as well. So mobile has been a great channel for us, and we can see it constantly growing right now.

Alexandru Dorobantu, Payments Manager, foodora:

We currently try to help our customers have a better shopping experience, by adding mobile payment methods. And this means we want them not to be redirected to some old banking page. We’re using Adyen to save customers' cards on the account so he can pay with one click. He just presses to pay, and everything is done.

One of the mobile payment methods that we were very successful with is Apple Pay. This is a payment method where the iPhone user can just click ‘pay’, and it will be debited from the card that was previously saved. So there’s nothing that he needs to do on our side to pay.

Joe Gemaye

Our challenge was to grow the company from one city, one market to 40 cities in 10 markets within in a year. There are a lot of challenges that come with this goal of scalability. Adyen has been foodora’s partner from the start, has helped us tremendously, and has made it easy for us to scale and be in all these markets.

Alexandru Dorobantu

We could use Adyen as a processor and as an acquirer at the same time. This means we just have one contract with Adyen, and we’re already processing in Europe through Adyen’s acquiring. 

One of the things we’re looking for in a partner is someone who is (let’s call it) one step into the future always. And Adyen definitely has this. Adyen is always working to add new payment methods and to support new functionalities as the market dictates. 

The fact that Adyen can take the customer's money and settle it to our account, I know everything related to this, and for each cent that we get into the account I know where it comes from, this is something that’s really helping us. And it's something that I’ve not seen many providers do.