Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program: Serve from American Express

Last week, Ben and I tested out a new payments platform from American Express called Serve.  Foodbuzz and American Express partnered up to give a few of us food bloggers the opportunity to try this new way of paying for dinner at the table.  Serve is a digital payments platform that allows you to manage your money, while also providing a way to pay others who have Serve accounts. For example, when you’re out to dinner with friends and the restaurant server brings the check, one person can pick up the bill while the others settle up with them later through their smart phone or home computer.  This way, everyone can just relax and continue to enjoy their drinks.  I don’t know about you, but I hate going through the rigamarole of splitting the check and I know it’s frustrating for the server as well.  So, in this scenario, Serve comes in very handy.

We got to use Serve for the first time when having dinner with friends at The Back Abbey, a small gastropub that other friends introduced to us last year.  Not only do they have an enormous selection of fine beer and wine, but their food is to die for.  We love their swanky burgers and the pretzel appetizer that’s accompanied with a dip that is so good I always ask for extra.  And, their fries?  Well, you can see from the photo below that the portion size is plentiful, and they are also delicious!

I didn’t bring my dSLR camera because I figured I could use Instagram on my iPhone to snap my photos.  Unfortunately, that didn’t turn out so well because the lighting was too dark and since I have an older iPhone without a flash, I couldn’t snatch one decent photo.  Luckily, Ben had a couple of pictures from our outing last year at The Back Abbey, so the two well-lit photos are from then…just so you can get an idea of the place.  🙂  Below, is one of the photos from our recent visit, which just shows you how bad the lighting was:

After dinner, it was so nice to have one person pay the bill and not ask the server for separate checks.  Then, Serve made it really easy for us to pay back our portion of the meal from our home computer.  I just logged into my account at Serve.com and inserted the email address of the person who paid for the bill (they must have a Serve account, too) and Serve took care of the rest.  Here is a screen shot of my steps:

See?  Pretty easy!  Right now, if you sign up for Serve, you will automatically receive a $10 credit!  This is free money, people! 🙂 You can choose to link your bank card to the account, or deposit money directly into it and opt for a debit-type card to use.  If you have kids, you can create a subaccount for them so you can pay them their chore money, or send them a few spending bucks while they’re away at camp or college!  There is more Serve can do, and they plan to do more in the future.  Read more about how it works here and sign up.  Then, come back to this blog post and leave a comment within the next 7 days to enter a giveaway for $100 credit to your own Serve account!  Winner will be announced the end of January.

Full Disclosure: As part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program, I received a $250 stipend to try Serve from American Express. Sign up for Serve and receive $10 credit towards your first use.  Comment below within the next 7 days for your chance to win an extra $100 credit to your account! Official sweepstakes rules and regulations may be found here: http://www.foodbuzz.com/blogs/4622317-win-serve-dollars-giveaway-official-rules