A group of students creates an alternative payment method in restaurants and bars.
We are sharing an article that tells the story of the Elevate Season 4 winners – PossePay, written by Georgi Kumanov and originally published in Bulgarian on Capital.bg.
- Initially, the team of the startup company consisted of five people, but later another person joined.
- The advantages of the fintech company are both for the customers and for the service staff.
- Future plans include developing their product into restaurant software
It happens to everyone that they go to a restaurant with friends or colleagues, and after the meal everyone from the company has to calculate how much money they should leave. And if someone doesn’t have cash, they need to transfer money through Revolut or another method to a friend who can cover the expense. During this time, the waiter is hanging over your heads and you feel awkward.
Although they haven’t discovered “the hot water”, six young people are providing a solution to this problem through the startup PossePay, which they started while they were still university students. The idea is not new and it even occurred to some of the people in the future team after a trip to Barcelona. Martin Stoilkov and Martina Stoyanova, with whom “Capital” spoke, do not hide that, although only a few, there are similar platforms in our country.
The main two problems that PossePay solves are about splitting the bill and leaving a tip for the service staff. It’s all done by scanning a QR code from everyone at the table. After that, the consumed products (+ tip amount, if you decided to leave one) and payment method are selected. All this can happen without waiting for the waiter to bring the bill or sitting at the table while you “fix” the bill.
“Shisha Bar” in Sofia is their first client, and in the future they do not rule out the possibility of going outside the country. Their wish is that, in addition to an alternative payment method, their product will become “software that closes the entire restaurant cycle”, including also the possibility of evaluating the staff and the restaurant, digital menus, etc.
From Barcelona to Bulgaria
Stoilkov and Stoyanova graduated from the American University in Blagoevgrad, where there is an accelerator program that encourages students towards entrepreneurship. In the beginning, they failed to find a good enough idea to present for participation in the program. Then, after a trip to Spain, three of their friends, who later joined the team, decided to develop the opportunity of splitting the bill in different places.
Thus, they were accepted to the program and received a free start-up funding of $2,000. After less than half a year, their product was ready and they were testing it in a restaurant in Blagoevgrad, where they also received the first feedback about it. The program’s jury liked their platform so much that they chose them among the three winning teams to share the $30,000 prize fund.
Months of refinement followed, as well as meetings with businesses to pitch their product. In November 2023, they also pitched it in front of business angels from the CEO Angels club at an event co-organized by UBB. Meetings with potential investors followed, but at this stage of the startup they do not disclose details. In mid-December comes the time for the start of the joint partnership with their first client – a hookah bar in Sofia. A second site is currently being prepared, and the team’s desire is “to focus on restaurants and bars that are more open to similar solutions”, reveals Martina Stoyanova.
She also shared that “it very much depends on the customers who go to these bars and restaurants” and on their preferred method of payment. They will go to the big cities like Sofia, as well as Varna, Burgas, Sozopol by the sea, and why not the winter resorts like Bansko. They believe that foreign tourists would massively use this payment option, because “a lot of foreigners are used to splitting the bill and paying it immediately through the phone,” Stoyanova explains.
In the team of the young company, she deals with marketing, and Stoilkov – with sales and negotiations with potential customers. Nikolay Yovkov is the person responsible for the design, and Nevena Ivanova – with the legal issues and drafting of the contracts.
The PossePay team at the launch of their partnership with the first establishment to use the company’s software. Source: PossePay
Scan Me
Martin Stoilkov explains how things happen with PossePay. “It’s actually very simple – each table has a unique barcode that is linked to the restaurant’s system. When the waiter enters items into that table’s bill, they are automatically charged to that barcode.” Then, being scanned by the customer, they see the entire bill and can select the drinks and food they have consumed.
Then he can choose whether to leave a tip and the next step is choosing a payment method. They are “account to account – you order a payment to the bank account of the restaurant, and at the moment the current options we support are all banks operating on the territory of Bulgaria”, explains Stoilkov and adds: “We have several foreign ones and Revolut.”
For PossePay to work, it is necessary to integrate it with the software of the restaurant. This is what their two team members – Alexander Ivanov and Ivan-Asen Chakarov – deal with. For businesses that decide to use PossePay’s software, the big advantage is the ability to provide their customers with yet another payment method that saves everyone time. On the one hand, visitors to the restaurant do not wait for the bill and can conveniently pay only their part of it. On the other hand, the service staff can welcome new customers or deliver orders, and a significant plus is the possibility of leaving a tip for cashless payment – an option that does not exist when paying with a bank card at a standard POS terminal in Bulgaria (only at those of some fintech companies like SumUp and myPOS).
60 to 100 Customers
Martin Stoilkov reveals: “In the next 12 months, we will certainly be focused entirely on the Bulgarian market and finding customers here.” He believes that once they reach between 60 and 100 customers, they will have enough data “about what’s working and what’s not working properly.” He adds: “Accordingly, we will have the opportunity to improve the things that are not good enough and to feel calm enough that once we have improved in an entire market, such as the Bulgarian one, we will be able to do it outside as well.”
In the future plans of the PossePay team is also an option to leave a rating for the service staff and the establishment. “With our system, the reviews will be real and you will know that they are from people who have really been there and seen the place, the service, the food, etc.,” says Stoilkov. At the request of the owners, these comments and ratings can also be uploaded to Google.
Last but not least, the team has an idea to introduce the opportunity of digitizing the menus to be viewed online and also ordered from them. “Our long-term plan is to build software that closes the entire restaurant cycle by offering a wide range of functionalities so that each restaurateur can choose for himself what he needs and what he doesn’t,” explains Martin Stoilkov.
