People are increasingly using credit cards for everyday purchases. For service workers who rely on cash tips—baristas, valets, barbers, coat check attendants, hotel housekeepers, etc.—the lack of cash in their pockets translates directly into less take‐home pay.
Enter electronic tip jars. A tip jar for credit cards allows the same generosity people demonstrate with cash, via the payment technology we actually have in our pockets.
The leader in this field is DipJar, which makes a metal cylinder with a card‐reader embedded in its center, and started with 20 units in New York before launching the next 500 units in early 2015.
“For merchants, a DipJar means more money in employees’ pockets. Service incentives are realigned—when everyone can tip, employees prefer a busy store to an empty one— and higher real wages mean lower turnover and training costs,” argues Ryder Kessler, CEO of DipJar. “And letting customers have an easy way to show appreciation for employees is a way of showing investment in your customer experience and in your employees’ qualities of life.”
The way it works is easy. You get a Dipjar, register it through www.dipjar.com and include information about your location and who’s working at the store. Then simply plug your DipJar into a power outlet and you can start accepting tips. The jar gives out a little dinging sound for each tip.
Cash tips are great, and it would be great if all customers always gave them, but our reliance on credit cards has gotten to a point where many people simply don’t carry much paper money with them anymore.
“So, people who don’t have cash on them wouldn’t have a way to tip today, so we bring in tips from these customers on top of the cash tips currently received,” Kessler boasts. “Our tests have shown that all DipJar earnings are new money: cash tips stay the same when a DipJar is introduced, and now extra earnings are brought in via credit card tips facilitated by DipJar.
technology, small business, productivity