Do you need a card reader or a till system?
They are different purchases with different pricing models, and mixing them up is how businesses end up paying twice.
A card reader with a simple till: SumUp from 1.69% per transaction, Flatpay at a flat 0.99% with no monthly fee, or Zettle from 1.75%. You pay per transaction with little or no fixed cost, which suits a market stall, a mobile trade or a small shop.
A till system with hospitality features: Ready2Order from €29 per month, Orderbird from €29, CashPad from €49, Tiller from €59, or Epos Now from £25 — monthly software fees, because table management, kitchen displays, stock control and multi-site reporting are the product.
A full venue platform: Trivec, with POS terminals, self-service kiosks, handheld ordering, kitchen displays and booking integration at custom pricing, aimed at hotels, restaurant groups and event venues.
Why can't you just use Square?
Because in much of Europe the till is a legal instrument, and the requirements are national rather than European.
Germany requires a TSE, a certified technical security device that signs every transaction so records cannot be altered retrospectively. Austria requires RKSV, its own signature and reporting regime. France requires NF525 certification for cash register software. These are legal obligations with penalties, not features.
Orderbird and Ready2Order handle TSE, Ready2Order handles RKSV, and CashPad is NF525 compliant — which is precisely why local providers exist in each market and why a globally uniform till struggles.
Ready2Order goes furthest on the multi-country problem, covering fiscal compliance across several European countries, which matters for a business operating in more than one and otherwise facing a different till per border.
What does a transaction rate actually cost you?
More than a monthly fee for most businesses, which is why the flat-rate comparison is the one to run.
At 1.69% a business taking €30,000 a month in cards pays about €507 monthly. At Flatpay's 0.99% the same volume costs about €297 — a difference of around €2,500 a year, which exceeds what any of the subscription till systems here charge.
Flatpay's model is flat-rate with no monthly fees and no binding contract, and the absence of a contract is worth as much as the rate: it removes the lock-in that makes switching processors painful, and it means the provider has to keep earning the business.
The subscription systems charge software fees separately from payment processing, so the total cost is monthly fee plus whatever processing rate you arrange. Running both numbers against your actual card volume is the only comparison that means anything, and it frequently reverses the intuition.
What does hospitality actually need?
Table management, a kitchen display and multi-site reporting — the three things a retail till does not have and a restaurant cannot work without.
Tiller runs on iPad with table management, kitchen display, online ordering integration and multi-location support from €59 per month, backed by SumUp for payments. Orderbird is the German equivalent on iPad with floor plans, TSE compliance and payment integration from €29. CashPad covers French restaurants and chains with multi-site management, real-time analytics, delivery platform integration, kitchen management and NF525 compliance from €49.
Trivec operates a tier above: POS terminals built for high-volume service, self-service kiosks, handheld ordering so staff take orders at the table, kitchen display systems and booking integration — a complete hospitality ecosystem for hotels and event venues, replacing Oracle MICROS and NCR Aloha rather than Square.
Ready2Order spans both hospitality and retail from Vienna at €29 per month, with table management, inventory tracking, online ordering integration and multi-country fiscal compliance.
What should a retailer look at instead?
Inventory, staff management and integrations, which are where a retail till earns its subscription.
Epos Now covers retail and hospitality from £25 per month with cloud-based POS, inventory management, staff management, an analytics dashboard and more than 100 integrations — that integration count being the practical difference for a shop that also sells online and needs the accounting to reconcile itself.
SumUp scales down further, adding online payments, invoicing and a business account alongside the card reader, so a small retailer runs the whole financial side from one provider rather than assembling three.
One jurisdictional note: Epos Now is UK-based under an adequacy decision rather than EU establishment, and Zettle, although Swedish, is owned by PayPal — an American company. Everything else here is EU-established, which for a system holding customer payment records is the distinction worth knowing before signing.
