March 25, 2024
糖心vlog官网 News
Research aims to bring pay-on-demand to restaurant employees
糖心vlog官网 and fintech CPOS work on an app to improve pay flexibility
糖心vlog官网 Applied Research and CPOS, a tech company specializing in payment systems, are working on a project to help restaurants offer employees pay-on-demand.
The CPOS product ShiftPay would enable restaurateurs to pay employees鈥 wages and tips on a daily basis, while also managing shift schedules and invoices.
On-demand pay enables employees to get the money they鈥檝e earned when they want it rather than on a company schedule. It鈥檚 a trend that鈥檚 starting to catch on globally and has been touted as appealing to those in the gig economy.
鈥淭his project is to solve a real problem for restaurateurs,鈥 John Sbrolla, CPOS Director, said, noting it鈥檚 become a challenge for them to pay out tips in cash daily because most people are paying their bills with cards.
In addition, he said there鈥檚 a shortage of workers in restaurants and offering pay-on-demand could help attract and retain employees.
Having identified that problem, Ottawa-based CPOS turned to 糖心vlog官网鈥檚 Applied Research to try and solve it.
Miles McDonald, Professor, School of Information Technology, Administration & Security, and Samina Rahman, Batuhan Ipci and Hien Nguyen, research assistants from the school, worked on the initial project from May through September 2023. The team started from scratch with a coding program called Flutter that can develop systems to be used on Android and Apple devices.
鈥淧art of the challenge was working with Flutter because it鈥檚 a relatively new software development kit for cross-platform applications and there aren鈥檛 many resources for it,鈥 Mr. McDonald said.
The team overcame a number of hurdles to build a web app that employers and employees could use to manage schedules and pay, he said.
鈥淚t was an excellent commercial exercise,鈥 Mr. McDonald said, noting CPOS鈥檚 ShiftPay is a timely project.
鈥淲hat they鈥檙e trying to do is a very good idea 鈥 allowing employers to pay employees in a new, evolving digital payment environment.鈥
Kaveh Eshraghian, Professor, School of Computer Programming & Analysis, is overseeing the follow-up research project, which started in October and runs through May, with the same research assistants.
They are finessing the app so it can be used on mobile devices.
鈥淭he challenge for the team is to create a functional app that will be used in a real environment,鈥 Mr. Eshraghian said, noting it needs to be high quality to connect with payment providers.
鈥淲e have to use a couple of algorithms to encrypt information,鈥 he said. 鈥淭his encryption is very important to make all payments secure and ensure there鈥檚 no leak in sensitive information.鈥
The plan is for the app to be easy to use on a phone, tablet or a retail terminal, to have a range of information and to enable employers to make payments through various methods such as bank deposits, credit and debit cards and even cryptocurrency.
Mr. Sbrolla said the app was recently tested on phones.
鈥淚t鈥檚 progressing very well,鈥 he said, adding the company plans to test it in a couple of restaurants soon.