POS Payment Gateway Designed for Hospitality Excellence

Card-present payments in hospitality

Most restaurant, café, bar and catering payments happen at the table or counter with the card or phone present. The terminal reads the chip or contactless interface, so these payments carry far less fraud risk than online payments and usually cost less. Contactless cards and mobile wallets let guests pay with a tap, which keeps queues moving at busy times.

Strong customer authentication at the till

Strong customer authentication (SCA) applies in person too, but contactless has an exemption.

• EU and EEA: under Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/389, a contactless payment can go through without authentication if it is no more than 50 EUR, and either the contactless payments since the last authentication add up to no more than 150 EUR or there have been no more than five in a row. Once the issuer's limit is reached, the guest is asked to insert the card and enter the PIN.
• UK: the contactless limit rose to £100 in October 2021. Since March 2026, FCA rules let banks and payment providers with strong fraud controls set their own limits, so the amount at which a card asks for a PIN can differ by issuer.
• Mobile wallets: Apple Pay and Google Pay check the customer on the phone with a fingerprint, face or passcode, so larger amounts can usually be paid with a tap.

Tips, gratuities and service charges

Card tips can be added on the terminal before approval, or afterwards by adjusting a pre-authorised amount where your acquirer supports it. Either way, your reports should show tips separately from sales.

In Great Britain, the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 came into force on 1 October 2024. Employers must pass tips, gratuities and service charges on to workers in full, by the end of the month after the tip was left, distribute them fairly with regard to the statutory code of practice, and have a written tipping policy where tips are left more than occasionally (UK government). Administrative fees can't be deducted first, and workers can ask for their tipping record.

Pre-authorisations for tabs and deposits

A pre-authorisation reserves an amount on the guest's card without taking the money. It suits:

• Bar tabs: open the tab with a hold, then capture the final amount, including any tip, when the guest settles.
• Short-notice events and private dining: hold an agreed amount at booking and capture what is due afterwards.

Holds don't last for ever: how long one stays valid depends on the card scheme and your merchant category code. For catering bookings weeks ahead, take the deposit as a payment instead. Capture only what was agreed and release the rest quickly.

Online orders, bookings and no-shows

Online ordering, table reservations and catering deposits paid on a website or app are card-not-present payments. Most EEA and UK cards need 3D Secure for them, and they carry chargeback risk that terminal payments largely avoid.

• No-show fees: if you save a card at booking and charge it later for a no-show, authenticate the card when you save it, show the fee and cancellation terms clearly and keep proof that the guest accepted them. Without that evidence, a no-show charge is easy to dispute.
• Delivery and collection: keep order times and delivery confirmations to answer "not received" claims.

Read chargebacks explained for how disputes work.

Split bills

A split bill is several separate payments against one order. Your POS should track each payment against the bill, accept a mix of cards, wallets and cash, and record tips per payment, so the bill closes cleanly and any refund goes back to the right card.

What card processing costs are made of

In the EU, interchange on consumer cards issued in the EEA is capped at 0.2% for debit and 0.3% for credit under the Interchange Fee Regulation, and the UK applies the same caps to UK consumer cards used at UK merchants. Commercial cards and cards issued abroad are not covered and usually cost more, which matters for business dining and tourist trade. Scheme fees and your provider's margin come on top. See card processing fees explained, and multi-currency processing if many of your guests pay with foreign cards.

PCI DSS for terminals

Every business that accepts cards must comply with PCI DSS. For card-present payments, the practical points are:

• Use terminals approved under the PCI PIN Transaction Security (PTS) programme and keep their software up to date.
• Prefer point-to-point encryption (P2PE), so card data is encrypted in the terminal and never readable in your POS or network. A validated P2PE solution can reduce the scope of your PCI assessment.
• Keep a list of every terminal and inspect them regularly for tampering and skimming devices.

Settlement times: agree them in writing

How quickly takings reach your bank account depends on the provider, the acquirer, your risk profile and any reserve. Before you sign, agree in writing when each day's takings will be paid out, how weekends and bank holidays affect that, and how tips, refunds and chargebacks are handled in settlement.

Guides for hospitality merchants

• POS and mPOS payment processing
• Payments for bars, nightclubs and nightlife venues
• Local payment methods in Europe
• How to prevent chargebacks
• Tokenisation explained
• What you need to apply