Paydragon goes all in on mobile payments with Checkout, its order-anything-anywhere-anytime feature

Mobile payments app PayDragon takes its fight on the foot cart line national with Checkout, its one-click shopping feature.

This past spring, PayDragon launched as a foodcart-friendly mobile solution for payment and order pickup. It was a quick and easy product spun out of Y Combinators Paperlinks, a QR-code advertising firm. But now, PayDragon is moving on to bigger things with its Checkout product.

Checkout gives PayDragon users the ability to buy grocery store items and non-perishable goods that hit the doorstep two days later, with no shipping fees and no minimum order requirement.

“We started with food trucks and beating that line,” says CEO and founder Hamilton Chan. “It’s called internally displaced purchasing.” And now PayDragon is taking that to the store with Checkout. This also means that Los Angeles residents won’t be the only ones that can enjoy PayDragon’s system; the foodcart function was only available in the area, but Checkout means that anyone can use the app.

Chan ran me through a demo with Checkout, which immediately launches a barcode reader. You scan an item and order it — Chan describes it as a great reorder method. See that almost-empty toothpaste container in your bathroom? Scan, order, and it’ll be on your front step in two days. You can also search products using the app if a barcode isn’t readily available.

“This has been a year in the making,” Chan tells me. “We went the food route first because food is more fun… but this is more B to C and it took us longer to get here. But we always wanted to make this possible.”

While Checkout is clearly realizing goals for the PayDragon team, Chan says its food cart feature is still doing well. Over 40 L.A. restaurants and food carts are using it, and 60 percent of people become returning users. The company is also looking at partnering with sports stadiums so that users can order from their seats and skip the line.

Checkout and PayDragon clearly will be able to co-exist and grow together as the startups tries to tackle mobile payments. Right now, the main focus for PayDragon is to get real consumer traction, a big part of the reason that shipping is free. “We feel like people haven’t cracked the nut about mobile paymnets, so we just want to get people to use mobile to buy everyday things,” says Chain. “We intend to make money longer term, and use that consumer affinity to move products for brands and manufacturers.”

While its a subtle pivot, it’s clear that PayDragon remains focused on one thing: “We just wanted to create one-click shopping for the real world,” says Chan.

Checkout is available today, and if you want to give the service a shot today, Digital Trends readers get $2 off their first PayDragon order using the code “digitaltrends.”

Source : http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/paydragon-goes-all-in-on-mobile-payments-with-checkout/

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