MyCheck's investor tab: $6.1M for waiter-less checkout

We’ve all been trapped at a busy restaurant, desperately trying to flag down a waiter, pay, and escape. MyCheck thinks there’s an easier way.

MyCheck has raised $6.1 million from investors to enable waiter-less checkout at more than 3,000 venues worldwide, the company will announce Tuesday. (VentureBeat received permission to run the story early.)

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“The value proposition to merchants is clear: it’s faster, there’s less chargeback, and you can sell more, because the server can concentrate on you and not the check,” said MyCheck co-founder Tal Zvi Nathanel, who heads up U.S. operations for the company.

But there’s plenty of benefit on the user side, too. Beyond speeding up the checkout process, the MyCheck apps for iOS and Android also support check-splitting, which could alleviate the social awkwardness of end-of-meal payments. If you only order a diet soda, you won’t feel obligated to pay for half of your friend’s bourbon when you can directly select items from your smartphone (in theory, at least).

Since MyCheck’s inception in March 2011, it has convinced roughly half of all restaurants in Israel to jump on board. It also has some traction in London and New York City, where patience is often less common than smartphone adoption. MyCheck recently opened offices in both of those cities to expand beyond its Israeli roots.

MyCheck is growing quickly, according to Nathanel, with an average monthly transactional growth rate of 40 percent. It’s integrated into 15 point of sale systems worldwide, which equates to easier implementation for most venues. And it boasts a merchant of record status and PCI compliance, so users can feel secure about using their credit credit through the app.

MyCheck competes with apps like TabbedOut and Cover, which offer similar payment and check-splitting functionality. NYC-based Cover raised a $1.5 million seed round this May and launched in New York earlier this month.

Square is another prominent MyCheck competitor, but perhaps less of a direct threat, because businesses using Square need to provide their own point of sale system.

But naturally MyCheck thinks it has the superior offering.

“There are a lot of companies out there doing mobile payments,” Nathanel told VentureBeat. “But we don’t look at ourselves as a mobile payments company. For us, it’s all about the experience. … The experience we provide to the merchant and to the user sets us apart.”

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MyCheck has 20 employees in Israel, nine in Manhattan, and five in London. It recently closed a $4.2 million funding round from mostly private investors, with participation from Colmobil vice chairman Yoav Harlap, the Saban family, the Wertheimer family, and Eli Elroy, among others. It previously raised a $1.7 million seed round.