In 2022, Ecuador produced more than 260 million chickens, according to the Ecuadorian Poultry Corporation, confirming its position among Latin America’s top chicken-consuming nations. Poultry represents a significant portion of household food expenditure, making it one of the country’s strongest and most stable consumer markets.
This steady demand has powered the rapid growth of Ecuador’s quick-service restaurant (QSR) industry, where brands like KFC have become part of daily life. As consumers increasingly adopt delivery and mobile ordering, QSR apps have transformed from convenience tools into essential channels for customer engagement and business expansion.
However, today’s diners expect more than quality food. They seek speed, reliability, and effortless digital experiences. A payment that fails or takes too long can quickly erode trust and drive customers away. In this context, digital payments have evolved into a defining factor of customer satisfaction.
This evolution also brings higher expectations. During peak demand periods such as lunch hours, weekend evenings, or televised events, thousands of users open their favorite apps at once, expecting every order to go through smoothly. When a transaction fails, the experience breaks instantly, and recovering that customer can be nearly impossible.
Industry data highlights how costly this friction can be. QSR Magazine reports that 51% of customers never return after a negative experience, while The Food Institute found that 66% of consumers would stop using a food delivery app after poor service. These figures clearly show that payment performance directly impacts approval rates, sales, and customer satisfaction.
For brands like KFC, where digital channels are central to daily operations, ensuring a seamless payment experience is not optional—it is a business imperative.
“Our priority is to make every order as seamless as possible for our customers. DEUNA’s technology helped us optimize approvals in real time, ensuring that every transaction goes through quickly and securely—something our users notice and appreciate.”
— Carlos Castro, eCommerce Manager
At a global level, the scale amplifies the impact. In 2023, more than 1.9 billion people ordered food online, generating over 400 billion dollars in revenue, according to Statista. Within such a fast-paced ecosystem, every instance of payment friction represents lost revenue and a missed opportunity to build long-term loyalty.
For high-volume QSR brands, each percentage point in approval rate has a tangible financial effect. Small improvements recover meaningful revenue, while even minor declines can quickly translate into measurable losses. Resilient, intelligent payment infrastructure has become essential to sustain growth and protect customer trust.
To stay ahead of growing digital demand, KFC Ecuador’s app needed to elevate its payment capabilities without disrupting the experience customers already trusted. Managing transactions across multiple processors and channels required not just operational consistency, but intelligent coordination.
The team sought a solution that could optimize approvals.Achieving this level of precision demanded more than a network of providers. It required a sophisticated orchestration layer capable of adapting dynamically to transaction behavior, optimizing routing in real time, and maintaining peak performance during high-traffic moments.
Recognizing this opportunity, DEUNA stepped in as a strategic partner. With extensive experience supporting high-volume enterprises across Latin America, DEUNA designed an architecture that could complement KFC’s existing systems, strengthen performance, and transform payments into a source of competitive advantage.
The shared objective was simple yet ambitious: turning payment operations into a true engine of growth by improving approval rates and reducing friction.
Through their partnership, KFC Ecuador’s app and DEUNA implemented an advanced orchestration layer enhanced with smart routing technology, taking the brand’s payment infrastructure to a new level of intelligence and performance.
DEUNA’s unified orchestration framework connected all payment providers through a single integration, creating a centralized ecosystem where data and performance insights could work together. This structure allowed KFC’s team to gain full visibility into approval rates, monitor performance in real time, and make faster, data-driven decisions to protect every transaction.
The addition of smart routing introduced an adaptive layer of optimization. Transactions were automatically redirected between processors based on variables such as card type, transaction amount, or network conditions. Each payment was sent through the route with the highest likelihood of success, ensuring consistency and reliability even during high-demand periods like lunch rushes or national events.
The collaboration quickly delivered measurable impact. Between January and October 2025, DEUNA’s orchestration helped KFC App Ecuador achieve:
These results demonstrate how intelligent payment orchestration can move beyond operational efficiency and directly drive business growth.
“KFC Ecuador App results highlight how intelligent orchestration can drive measurable business growth. By aligning routing decisions with real-time performance data, we helped turn payments into a source of efficiency and revenue.”
— José María Serrano, Chief Revenue Officer, DEUNA
