Cash App was meant to be a peer-to-peer online payment app, but it has certainly graduated from that, especially since it started issuing debit cards. Now, people do all sorts of things with Cash App on their smartphones, which does not exclude paying for goods and services.
When it comes to fast food, it’s only delusional to pretend like McDonald’s doesn’t matter. At the moment, it’s probably the biggest fast-food chain in the United States, so, you can naturally expect people to want their primary payment app to work where they eat.
In this article, I’ll answer the germane question: can you use Cash App at McDonald’s? However, that wouldn’t be until after I’ve analyzed how paying with Cash App works, if you can use the app to pay at fast-food joints, and if it’s possible to pay with the app without a Cash Card.
Can You Use Cash App at Fast Food?
In most cases, it’s possible to pay for fast food using your Cash App account, but there are cases when you’ll find it impossible. There are specific requirements that make it possible to pay using money from your Cash App balance, and if you or the fast-food joint meets them, you can pay using funds from your Cash App account.
One option is paying using your Cash Card, a Visa debit card that Cash App issues to verified users of the app. Since this card works like every other Visa debit card you know, you can use it to pay at pretty much every ATM outlet in the US, but the bulk of Cash App users do not have this card.
If you’re part of the several million people without a Cash App card, you can still pay by scanning a QR code, if the merchant offers a code that the app supports. Merchants using Square POS machines and other select checkout systems will be able to offer QR codes that you can scan with Cash App, and that’s about it.
Can You Use Cash App at Stores without a Card?
It’s no argument that the easiest way to pay using funds from your Cash App account at stores is using the Cash Card. However, it’s also well known that only 7 million of the over 30 million Cash App users have a Cash Card, excluding the majority of its users. Can you possibly pay at stores without a Cash App card?
If you read the preceding section carefully, you’ll notice that I mentioned two different ways to use Cash App to pay at fast food joints. In addition to paying with your Cash Card, you can also pay by scanning a QR code provided by the retailer, and that doesn’t apply to fast food restaurants only.
If you don’t have a Cash App card, you may want to ask the seller if their POS system lets you scan to pay using Cash App. If they use a Square point-of-sale system or any of the few other supported ones, you may not need a card to pay at stores using your Cash App account.
Can You Use Cash App at McDonalds?
If you have a Cash Card, yes, as the card works on the POS systems used in most McDonald’s joints across the US. As long as you have enough funds in your Cash App account and you can recall the PIN to the debit card, you should be able to make your payment pretty easily.
If you don’t have a card, however, it mightn’t be as simple. While McDonald’s does offer the feature that lets you scan a QR code to pay, we haven’t confirmed if it works with Cash App’s QR code scanner. To be safe, you should consider using Google Pay or Apple Pay for the payment if you’re aiming for contactless payment.
To recap, Cash App does work at McDonald’s if you’re using the Cash Card since it’s a Visa debit card that works across most payment systems in the US. However, if you don’t have the card, you can try the feature that lets you scan a QR code to pay, but I can’t guarantee if that will work.
Does Cash App Have a QR Code?
With QR codes being mentioned several times so far, you may be like: why have I never seen anything like QR code on my Cash App despite having it for several years already? Does Cash App have a QR code that you can scan to pay?
The answer is a bit complicated. As an end user, you don’t get the feature that lets you create custom QR codes to receive payments, but you do get a QR code that redirects to your profile. However, there’s another category of Cash App users that use the Square POS system.
What that does is help merchants collect payments from customers that come to patronize their stores. While you can pay with most cards acceptable in the United States, the system also generates QR codes that customers can scan easily to pay merchants using funds from their Cash App account.
READ MORE: Does McDonalds Take Apple Pay? Find Out
Conclusion
If you’re trying to eat out at McDonald’s but only with funds on your Cash App account, you should ensure you have your Cash Card handy. Not that I’m trying to suggest that you cannot pay on Cash App without the card, but you know it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Suzan was born in 1969 in Los Angeles and grew up in the San Fernando Valley. She attended UCLA, graduating in 1992 with a BA in Social Welfare.
From 1999 to 2004, Weiss was a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins’ Krieger School of Arts and Social Sciences and an adjunct professor of creative writing at The New School’s Eugene Lang College. She has also taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, New York University, and Columbia University.
She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons.