Wendy’s lets customers pay for food on their mobile app

Wendy’s, home to a bunch of square burgers and Frosty, is following in Burger King’s footsteps and embracing mobile payments. Now, you can use the Ohio company’s app to pay for your purchase in most of its locations in the US. Just like its Burger King counterpart, the app acts as sort of a digital wallet that generates six-digit codes you’ll have to give to cashiers for payment. Wendy’s, however, has regrettably left out one of the BK app’s best features — discounts and coupons.

Wendy’s is rolling out a program that lets customers pay using their smartphones, following a similar plans unveiled by Burger King this week. The Wendy’s Co., based in Dublin, Ohio, has been testing the mobile payment option over the past year and said the majority of its roughly 5,800 U.S. locations are now ready to accept the payments. The move reflects a push by fast-food chains to court younger customers by tapping into the attachment they have to their phones. “If they want to come in and give us business, we want to allow them to pay the way they want to pay,” Craig Bahner, chief marketing officer for Wendy’s, said in a phone interview. Burger King Worldwide Inc. also said this week it would introduce a mobile payment program at its U.S. restaurants in April.