McDonald's is currently testing its order-and-pay mobile application in several stores before its nationwide launch. The idea is to allow mobile users to place their orders before heading out to claim it at the store. The new technology stems from the challenges that the fast-food chain has encountered in terms of their restaurant ordering process.

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Currently, the order-and-pay mobile application is available in 29 select McDonald's store located in Monterey and Salinas, California. According to The Verge, the fast-food chain plans to expand the testing process to 51 more restaurants in the area of Spokane, Washington.

McDonald's is using the pilot testing phase of its order-and-pay mobile application to check its efficiency and detect problems ahead of its planned national rollout. By the end of the fourth quarter, the fast-food chain aims to make the technology available to 14,000 U.S. restaurants, including 6,000 stores located across the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, China, and France.

According to McDonald's, the order-and-pay mobile application offers something unique for their users as compared to the technology used by other fast-food chains. According to Tech Crunch, McDonald's explained that once a customer has finished placing their orders and paying for via the app, a geo-fencing technology will track the customer's location to check their proximity. Their orders will only be prepared once they are physically near the store to ensure the quality and freshness of their orders.

McDonald's order-and-pay mobile application will also serve an advantage when handling many orders. Based on the fast-food chains' statistics, a typical ordering process for one to three items in a drive-thru would take an average of 17 seconds, while eight to 10 items average up to 50 to 100 seconds. Based on the initial data gathered during the pilot test, the order-and-pay mobile cuts the average back down to 10 to 15 seconds.

As the frequency of customer visits to fast-food chains continue to increase, stores like McDonald's are looking for ways to make their services more efficient to their customers.

According to McDonald's vice president of U.S. Digital, Julia Vander Ploeg, "From the app to our restaurant operations, we've taken a fully integrated approach to ensure a seamless customer experience that we think our customers will love."