Bridge of Don Thistle striker Chris Angus hopes an app he has co-launched can benefit customers and businesses in the hospitality sector.
Digiipot was created by Angus and partner Nicola Lawson and launched on October 1.
It allows groups to save and spend money together through contactless payments on their phones, creating the equivalent of a cash kitty digitally.
Former Buckie Thistle and Inverurie Locos player Angus said: “We’ve got QR codes for pubs and restaurants.
“If you scan that QR code on your phone it will take you to the app and you can start from there and invite friends to it.
“We’ve got quite a few banks on board such as Bank of Scotland, RBS and Nationwide and are currently tying up the loose ends with Virgin so it should hopefully be open to anybody.
“We’ve got two sides. At Bridge of Don I’ve started a group for team fines so every week if anybody has to pay fines they do it through that.
“Then when we go on an end of season trip we’ll use Digiipot to spend that money which will be saved up throughout the season.
“We’ve all got transparency of what’s in the kitty and anyone can spend it.
Businesses can benefit
“We also found during the process that when you pay with your debit card in a restaurant or a pub the transaction fees for the restaurants and bars are extortionate.
“It’s 17p per transaction plus a percentage of the spend so if you spend £100 in a restaurant the restaurant would be charged £1.65.
“Businesses are paying through the nose to use Visa and Mastercard.
“But with our platform we can save bars and restaurants 80% of their current transactional fees.
“We want to have a community driven app where the bars and restaurants in Aberdeen can be on board and our users can spend their money in these establishments.”
Lockdown was app inspiration
The idea for the Digiipot app came about during the first lockdown last year as society moved away from using cash.
Angus, 31, added: “The whole reason the app came about was during the first lockdown Nicola said ‘what’s going to happen to the cash kitty?’ when a lot of places started being card only.
“We thought there would be an app for it because there are apps for everything.
“But we looked and there was nothing there and the cashless society of the lockdown encouraged us to go and create the app and we have.”
