A card machine for your small business, linked to your till

Link a Stripe Terminal reader (UK): staff tap Card reader on the till, the amount appears on the reader, and the guest taps their card or phone. The sale is marked paid when the payment goes through, with no re-keying and no mismatch at the end of the night.

Keep your own card machine: take the payment on your machine as you do today and tap Card on the till, so it counts in your takings and cash-up. This suits venues tied into a bank machine or a contract they want to see out.

• See the till →
• See cash-up and reports →

Compare three things: the price of the machine, the fee on each payment, and any monthly rental or contract. A low headline rate can come with a monthly fee or a minimum term, and a machine with no monthly fee can charge more per payment.

With a Stripe reader there is no rental and no contract: you buy the reader, and card payments go to your own Stripe account at Stripe’s rates, with the money paid out to your bank. Café QR adds a 0% platform fee.

• ✓Machine: bought outright, rented monthly, or included in a contract
• ✓Per-payment fee: a percentage, a fixed pence charge, or both
• ✓Contract length, early-exit fees and payout timing

When the card machine and the till don’t talk, staff type every amount twice. One wrong digit means the guest is charged the wrong amount, or the end-of-day totals don’t match and someone spends ten minutes finding out why.

A linked reader takes the amount from the till, so what the guest pays is what the order says, split bills included. Card takings in your reports then match the payouts from Stripe.

• EPOS, till or POS: what’s the difference →

With QR table ordering, guests pay from their own phone by Apple Pay, Google Pay or card before the order reaches the kitchen. Busy cafés and beer gardens use it to keep the queue at the card machine short.

• See how order and pay at table works →