113 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 27 Mar \ on: What would you build with an escrow API? bitcoin
Escrow could solve tipping.
This is a bit of a pipe dream, but tipping culture in the US doesn't make any sense at all. Supposedly it exists to align incentives when business owners don't have good visibility into an interaction.
Instead of tips, we switch over to using micro-escrow as follows:
Customer plays role of third party.
Restaurant puts a small portion of employee's pay into an escrow for each interaction (in this case, a meal).
After the meal, customer either releases the funds to the employee or to the restaurant.
Customer isn't withholding funds in either case, so stingy tippers isn't an issue.
Restaurant isn't in charge of whether the employee gets the "tip" - so the employee is incentivized to provide good service.
This would align all three parties in the desired outcome: best cheapest service at the table.
The API allows something like this to happen in an app or tableside.
To apportion the tip the customer scans a QR on the receipt, opens a slider where the patron scores service 1-10
Lower the score more goes to the overall pot, higher the scale more to the specific server, boundaries are set at either extreme and default of 5 or no response
Lots of behavior changes implied there but it is well-aligned, patron still gets to feel good about themselves when sliding that puppy up to 10... its also an opportunity for the restaurant to link happy people to google reviews
reply