Restaurant Payment Systems: A Guide for UK and Ireland Operators
What payment systems do restaurants need?
Most restaurants take money in five places: the counter, the table, online, the kiosk and over the phone. Each one works a bit differently. The simplest setups run all of them through one system, so you aren't juggling a separate provider for each.
What you'll need:
- Card terminals, countertop or handheld, for the counter and the table
- Card payments built into your POS
- Online payment processing for website and app orders
- Contactless readers built into any self-service kiosks
Card processing rates
In the UK, restaurants usually pay between 1.2% and 2.5% per card transaction. Where you land depends on your volume, how many of your customers pay with corporate cards rather than personal ones, and the provider. Some providers add a monthly fee on top.
| Provider type | Typical rate range | Suited to |
|---|---|---|
| Integrated POS payments | 1.2-1.7% | Restaurants wanting one system |
| Standalone card machine | 1.5-2.5% | Simple single-location setups |
| Flat-rate processor | 1.75% flat | Low-volume independents |
The lowest headline rate isn't always the cheapest deal. Check the hardware cost, the monthly fee, how long the contract runs and whether the terminal talks to your POS.
Standalone vs integrated payments
Standalone card machines from SumUp, Square or Teya take card payments but don't connect to your POS. Staff key every amount into the terminal by hand, so each sale gets recorded in two places and someone has to match them up at the end of the night. Mistakes creep in, mostly during a busy service when nobody has time to double-check.
With integrated payments the terminal is connected to the till. When the customer pays, the POS sends the amount straight to the terminal. Nothing gets typed twice. One record per sale, one end-of-day reconciliation.
If you're doing more than about 30 covers a day, integrated is worth the small difference in cost. The time staff save and the errors they stop making cover it.
Online payments
If you take orders through your own website or app, the ordering platform usually handles the payments.
Check for:
- PCI-DSS compliance. It's mandatory if you handle card data.
- Apple Pay and Google Pay, which make a big difference to how many mobile customers actually finish checking out
- Saved cards for repeat customers
- No extra per-transaction fees on top of the platform's standard rate
Most restaurant ordering platforms include payments in the package, so you don't need a separate merchant account.
Kiosk payments
Self-service kiosks have a contactless reader built into the hardware instead of a separate terminal. Kiosk orders usually come in 15-30% higher than counter orders because of the upsell prompts, so when a kiosk reader fails you lose a bigger order than you would at the till.
Kiosk payments fail for dull reasons: a hardware fault, the connection dropping, a transaction timing out. Each one is a lost order and an annoyed customer standing at the screen. Pick a kiosk provider whose hardware has already held up in other restaurants.
What card fees cost
Take a restaurant with £600,000 a year in card turnover:
- At 1.5%, that's £9,000 a year in fees
- At 2.0%, it's £12,000
- That's £3,000 a year between the two
Moving from a standalone terminal to integrated POS payments at a lower rate often pays for itself in the first year, hardware included.
Why one system beats three
Run payments through separate systems - one terminal at the counter, a different gateway online, a third provider for the kiosks - and you've got three sets of reports to reconcile, three contracts and three support lines to ring when something breaks.
One payment platform connected to one restaurant POS system covers every channel. Closing up takes less time, disputes are easier to dig into and chargebacks all land in one place.
How Flipdish handles payments
Flipdish runs payments for in-person POS, online ordering, kiosks and mobile apps through one platform. You get one dashboard for all your transaction data, one reconciliation report and one support team to call.
It's built for UK and Ireland restaurants that are tired of managing several payment providers and want lower processing rates as their volume grows.