Creating the world’s first tap-and-pay closed-loop mobile wallet

Tim Hortons is a top 50 quick-service restaurant (QSR) with more than 4000 locations across North America. The brand approached Stellar Elements to help create a mobile payment solution to reduce customer queueing times. The solution needed to leverage its existing infrastructure including point-of-sale (POS) and two different payment processors.

The main challenges Tim Hortons faced:

• Behind competition in the QSR space (no mobile solution)

• Operational inefficiencies at checkout

• Legacy point-of-sale infrastructure

Tim Hortons and Stellar Elements partnered to deliver a mobile application with payment functionality using a proprietary mobile payment software development kit (SDK). The kit was leveraged to build secure barcode mobile wallet solution–the first of its kind in the world.

In less technical terms, this application can be likened to Apple Pay before Apple Pay even existed.

The application identifies and closes experience gaps in service, consistency, and innovation.

TimmyMe was the world’s first HCE-enabled closed-loop mobile wallet. This gave Tim Hortons a competitive edge, establishing the company as an innovative leader in the QSR space. The app quickly proved successful in the market: