Fast food chain Burger King Corp. is offering a new mobile payment app. The program is being piloted at 50 Salt Lake City-area Burger King restaurants. The BK Mobile Crown Card lets customers use their smartphones to pay for purchases at counters and drive up windows. 

"At Burger King Corp., we are focused on delivering an excellent restaurant experience for our guests, which includes optimizing our point of sale technology and providing quick and easy payment options," said Burger King CIO Kelly Maddern.

"The BK Mobile Crown Card is the perfect fit for our technology and quality-conscious consumers who lead mobile lifestyles," Maddern said. "And we are excited about putting this functionality into their hands, getting their feedback and building from there."

Partnering with Burger King on the app is mobile commerce company Firethorn Mobile Inc., a Qualcomm company.

"We are pleased to collaborate with Burger King on this new program because it frees BK restaurant customers of the burden of carrying plastic," said Rocco Fabiano, president of Firethorn.

Fabiano said the BK Mobile Crown Card is unique because it works on any Android or iOS phone and does not require a new hardware investment by franchisees.

Unlike mobile payment solutions that create a barcode on the phone to be read by a scanner, which would have to be added at most BK POS terminals, the BK Mobile Crown Card uses a phone's embedded camera to do the work.

The app is basically a prepaid account (using payment processor First Data's prepaid card technology) that accesses the cloud to process a transaction.

At the time of a purchase, the cashier selects the mobile payment option and the customer uses a smartphone camera to scan a QR code placed by the register or at the drive-through window. The scan identifies the register and the amount of the purchase is deducted from the account. 

The free BK Mobile Crown Card App, called "BK," is available at the Apple App Store and at Google Play.

To read more about programs like this, visit the Restaurants research center.