Top 5 Restaurant Payment Providers for UK Restaurants
The top 5 restaurant payment providers in the UK
Here's the list, in order:
- Flipdish - payments across POS, online ordering, kiosks and AI phone ordering, all in one system
- Dojo - fast settlement on a standalone card machine, built for hospitality
- SumUp - simple card acceptance for small, low-volume operators
- Square - a basic all-in-one for cafés and simple retail
- Teya - a card machine with basic EPOS for small hospitality businesses
The ranking comes down to one question. Do you want payments connected to the rest of the restaurant, or do you just want a card machine? Flipdish is built for the first. The other four lean towards the second, to different degrees.
Why payment integration matters for restaurants
Most restaurants take money in at least two places: at the till, and online through a website, app or marketplace. If those run on separate systems, someone has to join them up by hand.
That someone is usually the manager, at the end of a shift, with a card terminal slip in one hand and an online orders report in the other, trying to work out why neither matches the till. It's tedious work and it's easy to get wrong.
When payments sit inside your POS and online ordering system, a few things change:
- Takings from every channel show up in one report, so there's no daily reconciliation
- Refunds and voids happen at the POS, not on a separate terminal
- Order data and payment data are linked, so you can see profit by item and not just total revenue
- Staff learn one system instead of several devices
None of this is exciting. It just gives the manager that time back for running the floor.
What to compare
| Factor | What to check |
|---|---|
| Transaction fees | The blended effective rate across all card types, not the headline rate |
| POS integration | Does the terminal talk directly to your till software? |
| Online payments | Does the same provider take online orders, or is that separate? |
| Settlement speed | How quickly do funds reach your account? |
| Hardware cost | Included, leased or bought separately? |
| Chargebacks | What help do you get when a customer disputes a payment? |
| Multiple sites | Can you see every location from one dashboard? |
| Mobile payments | Does it take Apple Pay, Google Pay and contactless? |
Fees get the most attention, and they matter. But a cheap rate on a terminal that doesn't connect to anything else can cost you more in staff time than it saves in fees.
1. Flipdish
Flipdish Pay was built for restaurants. It takes card payments at the POS, online payments from your website and app, payments at self-service kiosks, pay-at-table payments by QR code, and card payments over the phone through the AI phone agent. One system covers all of it.
In practice that means:
- Payments run natively through the Flipdish POS. There's no separate terminal software and no middleware.
- In-person and online payments reconcile automatically in a single dashboard.
- Contactless, chip and PIN, Apple Pay, Google Pay and QR code payments all work.
- At the table, customers scan a QR code, order and pay. Nobody has to bring a terminal over.
- Kiosk payments go through the same stack as POS and online orders.
- Multi-location reporting puts every site's payment performance in one view.
- The AI phone agent can take a phone order and process the card payment in the same call, so staff don't have to key anything in afterwards.
For a group with several sites, this means one provider, one contract and one reconciliation process however many locations you run. A standalone terminal can't give you that.
Flipdish is the right fit for restaurants and restaurant groups that want payments tied into their ordering and kitchen systems.
2. Dojo
Dojo is a UK payments company that focuses on hospitality. Its card machines run Android, the interface is clean, and settlement is typically next business day.
What it doesn't do is run your restaurant. There's no POS and no online ordering system. If you want Dojo to talk to your existing setup you need a third-party connection, and matching Dojo payments to orders in your ordering platform still takes manual work.
If all you want is a good standalone card machine with fast settlement, Dojo is a reasonable choice. If you want payment data connected to order data, you'll outgrow it.
Dojo suits hospitality businesses that want a modern card machine, quick settlement and basic reporting from the terminal itself.
3. SumUp
SumUp makes card readers and a basic EPOS product. Pricing is simple: a fixed percentage per transaction, and no monthly fee on entry-level readers. That's why you see it at market stalls and pop-ups, and in part-time food businesses where volume is low and setup time is short.
It's thin on restaurant features. There's no kitchen display integration, no marketplace aggregation, no multi-location management and no AI tools. The EPOS is basic next to platforms built for restaurants.
SumUp suits market stalls, pop-ups and very small food businesses that need to take cards with minimal setup.
4. Square
Square started in the US and is available in the UK. It has a POS, online ordering and card readers, which makes it one of the few options on this list that covers more than payments. For a café or a sandwich counter, that's a working all-in-one setup.
Restaurants with more complicated needs will hit limits. Multi-location management, kitchen display integration and customer marketing tools are less developed than Flipdish's, and marketplace aggregation is limited.
Square suits cafés and simple food retail where the requirements are straightforward.
5. Teya
Teya is a UK provider selling card machines, basic EPOS and business banking integration, aimed at small hospitality businesses. Payment processing comes bundled with some basic reporting.
It doesn't go much further than that. There's no online ordering, no branded apps, no kitchen display system, no marketplace aggregation and no multi-location management.
Teya suits small hospitality businesses that want a card machine and a basic EPOS in one device.
Payment provider comparison
| Provider | Native POS | Online payments | Kiosk payments | Multi-location | AI tools |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flipdish | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Dojo | No | Via third party | No | Limited | No |
| SumUp | Basic | Limited | No | Limited | No |
| Square | Own basic POS | ✓ | No | Limited | No |
| Teya | Basic | No | No | No | No |
Understanding transaction costs
Card fees in the UK restaurant market run from about 0.5% to 2.5%, depending on card type, monthly volume and contract terms. A small gap in rate adds up quickly.
Take a restaurant processing £50,000 a month in card payments:
- At a 1.2% average rate, that's £600 a month, or £7,200 a year
- At a 1.8% average rate, that's £900 a month, or £10,800 a year
The difference is £3,600 a year, before you count hardware and subscription costs. If you run several sites, add up the combined turnover and negotiate on that. Volume discounts are there to be asked for.
When you compare quotes, ask for the blended effective rate across every card type you accept. A headline rate usually refers to consumer Visa debit. Commercial, corporate and international cards cost more in interchange, and a restaurant that takes a lot of business lunches or tourist spend will feel it.
What true POS integration means
Payment providers use the word "integration" loosely. Some use it to describe importing a daily sales total into your accounts. That's a report, not an integration.
Real POS payment integration works in real time. The cashier totals an order and the exact amount goes to the card reader. The customer pays, the reader confirms, and the POS marks the order as paid. Nobody retypes a figure and nobody balances anything at the end of the day.
With Flipdish Pay that's how it works by default. The card readers are Flipdish devices talking directly to the Flipdish POS. There's no middleware, no manual reconciliation and no separate daily close.
The cost of fragmented payments
Plenty of restaurants use one provider for in-person payments and another for online orders, and they tend to underestimate what that costs in admin. Someone reconciles two sets of reports every day. Chargebacks on online orders go to one provider and disputes on in-person payments go to another. Card fees show up in two places in the accounts.
Multiply that by the number of sites. A group with six locations has six managers each doing their own version of the same reconciliation, and a finance team trying to make the totals agree. Moving everything onto one integrated provider cuts the time spent on this and cuts the errors too.
Questions to ask before you sign
Whichever provider you're leaning towards, put these to them directly:
- What is my blended effective rate on my actual card mix, not the advertised rate?
- When an order is paid at the till, how does the payment reach the POS? Is it real time, or an end-of-day import?
- Who handles a chargeback on an online order, and who handles one on a card-present sale?
- How long until the money lands in my account, including weekends and bank holidays?
- What happens to the hardware if I cancel or close a site?
- Can I see all my locations in one dashboard without exporting anything?
If a provider can't answer the second one clearly, that tells you most of what you need to know.
Choosing the right payment provider
If you're a small operator who wants low-cost card acceptance and nothing else, SumUp and Square do the job. If you want fast settlement on a modern standalone terminal, Dojo is a reasonable pick.
If you want payment data connected to order data - every channel reconciling automatically, with payments in the same system as the POS, online ordering and kiosks - Flipdish Pay is the strongest option in the UK market.
For more independent comparisons of restaurant payment providers, visit restauranttech.co.uk.