Tap and go. That’s the new norm for more and more consumers, reflected in the 2017 milestone of debit card use overtaking the number of payments in the UK and Ireland for the first time.

As trouser pockets and purses become less weighed down by smash and small change, consumers expect fast, efficient transactions that allow them to get what they need, with the minus of faff and fuss.

Cashless bars and cafes, recently a novelty even in the fast cash confines of The City, are now mopping up across the UK, with owners and operating extolling the speed of service, lack of cashing up at the end of the day and lower insurance premiums alongside lessened security issues.

Traditionally if you spotted a courier whizzing through town, you might expect the precious cargo on board to be urgent paperwork, legal documents or perhaps some crucial plans for a development meeting. Now, that package is more likely to be a Pad Thai, a Gourmet Vegan Burger, Burritos or even a Hawaiian poke bowl.

As working habits have changed, technology has advanced and consumer palettes become more open to world cuisines and adventurous flavours, the gourmet takeaway sector has exploded in popularity with brands like Deliveroo, UberEats and Just Eat all household names.

Deliveroo was estimated to hit six million UK customers before the end of 2018 and works with over 15, 000 British restaurants and saw 600% revenue growth in 2016 followed up by a further 116% growth in 2017. Just Eat meanwhile, boasts just shy of 500, 000 app users and the numbers only continue to grow as over 25% of Brits order takeaway food once a week.

Whilst we acknowledge that these delivery apps allow for the driver to be tipped, we think the request to tip comes too premature in the process, and before you commit to giving someone a tip, ensuring that the food is warm, still in its container and your driver has found your door without buzzing your neighbours at 10.30pm on a Wednesday evening. Over and above this I am not actually sure how much of the tip goes to the driver and if any of the money is kept by either the company or the restuarant staff who made and served the food.

TipJar provides a solution to this, we give the restaurant and or the driver to affix their unique code to delivery packaging, giving the customer the chance to tip based on service quality and the understanding and assurance as to who their tip goes to.

We want to thank each and every one of our amazing investors, who have joined our tipping revolution and are helping us to help tipped workers earn more. With your support we absolutely SMASHED our funding target of £300k, raising over £645K which we are already putting to work with more innovation, more development and more advances that will help us be the best cashless tipping solution in the world.