Mostly sunny, hazy, hot, and humid. Heat index around 100 degrees. There might be a stray late-day shower or thunderstorm, especially south..
Partly cloudy, warm, and muggy. A stray shower or thunderstorm can’t entirely be ruled out.
Updated: July 28, 2023 @ 2:58 am
WFMZ.com Reporter
Shift4, a Lehigh County-based financial-technology firm, says it will help customers and restaurants fend off “junk fees” added to online orders.
Shift4 did not mention any specific competitors in its statement Thursday, but Toast may be the target of Shift4’s promotion of its SkyTab point-of-sale system.
Boston-based Toast made a 180-degree flip eight days ago, dropping an unpopular 99-cent fee on some orders. The Toast fee is now “toast.”
Toast’s problem may be Shift4’s opportunity.
Customers hate junk fees, mysterious extra charges that appear on orders for no apparent reason and are not always broken out separately. Toast apparently did not expect the backlash from people who order, and restaurant owners.
In fact, Toast “had the best of intentions” when adding the fee, Toast Chief Executive Chris Comparato actually said July 19.
“That is not how the change was perceived by some of you,” his online statement said, pointing out the obvious – people do not like paying extra fees. Toast “made the wrong decision,” he conceded in the statement that said the 99-cent fee would be dropped.
After the Toast situation, Shift4 is trying to recruit restaurants to install its SkyTab point-of-sale system with a $1 payment for each online order received for three months. Shift4 will also offer restaurants as much as $5,000 to encourage them to switch to SkyTab from competing systems. The offers are subject to conditions and a time limit.
“Clearly some of our competitors are looking for new revenue streams and they are getting creative and aggressive with billing tactics,” Jared Isaacman, founder and chief executive of Shift4, said in a statement. Again, he did not mention Toast.
Isaacman said his company’s system provides an alternative for restaurant owners who do not want to pay junk fees or pass them on to customers.
“This is really about trust,” he said. “We don’t take our customers for granted and certainly don’t subscribe to imposing fees that create friction between them and their patrons.”
Shift4 processes payments at restaurants, hotels, entertainment venues and stadiums, including the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.
Shares in the company are traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol FOUR. At 11:30 a.m. Thursday, the price was $67.44. In the last 52 weeks, shares have traded as high as $76.40 and as low as $33.73.
The company has a market capitalization of $5.6 billion. Shift4’s headquarters is in Upper Saucon Township.
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WFMZ.com Reporter
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