In most countries I've been the waiter brings the PoS terminal to you and you pay at the table.
Before credit cards were handled electronically the server used to have to use one of these to make a carbon paper imprint of your card: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_imprinter
While they a weren’t _huge_ they weren’t very easy to bring to the table and use, so I imagine we just got used to the experience of the server running off with our card. In wasn’t until the pandemic that I noticed most restaurants using handheld terminals.
1. We adopted chip cards quite late, so a lot of legacy hardware still exists - including payment terminals built into restaurant point of sale machines with a magnetic strip reader, instead of a separate card terminal.
2. Wireless card terminals are not common in the US, outside of things like Square or Toast readers. Readers are usually hardwired to the POS and aren't able to be "undocked" and carried around.
3. Outside of contactless, signatures are still usually required, and people are still used to having the receipt printer at the host stand alongside the terminal, instead of built into the card reader.
This is all slowly changing, and I honestly chock a lot of it up to stuff like smartphone payments (remember, we got Apple Pay before having contactless embedded in the majority of cards!) and smartphone-based POS systems like Square.
Credit cards have no PIN in the US (and debit cards can usually be used without one as well), which makes this approach possible in the first place, and the tipping culture that can make it desirable to get a quiet moment with the check to figure out amounts.
Practically, it also means that even larger restaurants usually only need very few POS terminals at a central location, rather than one per waiter, requiring wireless infrastructure in larger restaurants etc.
This is changing very fast, though – I‘m seeing both combined order and payment handheld devices (that support tap-to-pay, i.e. also Apple Pay) as well as the QR payment solution in more and more places.
Just want to correct this idea which has been repeated several times on this topic: You only need 3 or 4 for a larger restaurant. The entire restaurant does not pay simultaneously.
When you (the server) are done with them you just put them back in a charging dock or some other communal space.
It makes a lot of sense, in my view: Handling orders tickets digitally is probably incredibl useful for the kitchen (especially considering a mix of dine-in and takeout orders).
From there, it‘s only a small (ok, not really small because PCI-DSS, but at least possible) step to also having these things do payments.
[0]: The European Banking Authority (EBA) calls on traders to make use of the exemption for strong customer authentication up to 50 € as allowed under Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/389.
For this reason alone, you do need a PIN pad at every terminal.
The money on the line with handing your card to the server is not comically small. They can max out your credit card with whatever charges they want. They don't even need to go through their POS system, as they can charge your card with any online retailer.
It’s a common comment from Americans, but is misleading at the very least.
I have never even heard of a fraudulent transaction that was not reversed almost immediately, and I have been living in 3 EU countries (well, one of them ex-EU now). The procedure is: call the bank, notify them, they suspend the card and send you a new one (usually for free once a year or so, for about €20 after that). Usually they call you before you notice it; they are very good at spotting this.
It’s the same thing for card-present fraud: you have some time to declare your card lost or stolen, and all the transactions after the time you lost it are reversed. Your liability is €50 for the transactions that happened before you called them, and nothing afterwards.
I am willing to believe that consumer protection is better in the US for some specific aspects, but I am yet to see relevant examples.
My first experience was with a bog standard Visa debit card at a French bank 10 years ago (card not present; someone apparently used my card at an ATM in Singapore to withdraw €1200 total; the bank notified me and refunded the first €500 withdrawal that went through).
My second experience was at a British bank just before Brexit (standard Visa debit card as well). I had lost my card without realising it. I called my bank when I found out and they went through the recent history to check every transaction. It turned out someone bought something with the card (can’t remember whether it was online or contactless; a small sum regardless) and that was refunded.
The regulations are very consumer friendly, even for debit cards, which everybody uses. And while they do indeed change with time, so far it has been in the direction of better consumers protections.
I don’t claim that Europe is better or anything like that, just that “the consumer is liable for frauds with their card” is wrong. IIRC, their liability is €50 maximum (and €0 in some countries) for transactions that happened before the bank was notified, and €0 after. Beyond that, the onus is on the bank to demonstrate negligence or fraud on the consumer’s part. In that case of course the consumers is liable and gets a fine at the very least.
To be clear, I neither said that not intended to imply that, so I find it a little questionable that you placed it in quotes. I think the protections are more or less fine, but seem to vary more and aren't as clear-cut for zero liability as I've found in the US, but I'm sure this varies a lot by country anyway. In any case, I've lived in multiple European countries for years now, so my experience is not solely from the US.
I’ve seen here waiters asking for the pin, writing it down on a piece of paper, and taking the card back to the POS terminal.
We've had this in America for over a decade at big chain suburban restaurants like Ruby Tuesday's and Applebees.
Ah, you edited your response. Mine still is valid I guess.
Must have been the Applebees that you went to. I went to one in 2014 that brought the POS to the table. I remember the year because it was in a state that I've only been to once, for a business trip.
I don’t have a computer screen in my car for the same reason. Software engineers tend to produce shit tier user experiences. (Speaking as one)
The machine just asks for a tip and lets you put a % or $ amount in, usually with a suggested amount. I'm not sure what difference you perceive here between writing it on a piece of paper and entering it on a terminal.
Then the waiter returns with the machine, enters the total (including tip) - you touch your card to the machine (and if the amount is high enough enter a pin.)
The waiter does not handle the card.
There is no awkwardness at all.
I recently joined a newly-arrived US friend at a restaurant, and he paid, but clearly didn't understand the edit-the-bill process, so we tipped in cash then gave quick education.
It's a system that works well, is effecient and secure. Overall you stay in control of your card and your card is only processed once.
I've seen systems where you input the final sum you want to pay, and systems where you can input the tip separately.
The experience I dislike goes like this: The server gives you the hand-held terminal and then stands watching you, tapping his/her foot impatiently, while you hurriedly verify the check, then calculate a tip amount under the server's scrutiny. I guess I'm a wimp. With the server's eyes on me, I feel the pressure to tip generously, no matter how poor the service or the overall experience.
By contrast, I find the traditional system, where the server would drop off the paper check for you to examine on your own time, to be private, un-rushed, and less prone to error.
After three decades of paying my restaurant checks without a POS terminal, I've never encountered any monkey business during the brief time the server is in possession of my credit card. Is "restaurant credit-card fraud" really a thing?
> Is "restaurant credit-card fraud" really a thing?
The only times I've ever had my card used fraudulently in my life were after trips to the US where I used it in a restaurant. It is absolutely a thing. Do you really think no one's ever thought to skim a card they're holding on to for an indefinite amount of time away from its owner?
And than in 10 minutes waiter arrive with hand held POS.
No idea if there is non-negligible fraud in the form of staff copying down the card number and security code for online payments fraud, though.
QR code menus 99% of the time just link to the website menu (which existed before the QR code for menus became popular, and is still wack). And it usually sucks just as much as it did before.
QR for a check is a beauty. Exact same experience as yours, there is a local restaurant that did it, and I was prepared for the worst. But I scanned the code, it did the Toast app clip, and the entire process was extremely smooth. I went to that restaurant multiple times since then, and I would be lying if I said that the "qr to pay the check using the app clip" didn't at least partially contribute to that.
- You need good signal or connect to wi-fi to pay (not a given in many restaurants)
- The restaurant can get your email address by default when paying with Apple Pay
- Much slower than just tapping my card or phone on the POS
Compared to the waiter walking away with my card, handing me a receipt to sign and top to fill in, I kind of understand the trad-off – but at-the-table POS solutions have existed for many years now.
Ironically, many of the QR payment places I‘ve been to actually have these as well.
I get that jumping from a central POS to a device per waiter is an investment – but why switch to QR codes if all your staff is already equipped with a strictly superior solution?
That’s a big if in the US.
The ones I‘ve seen that have switched to QR payments had mobile POSes before.
Can you provide any evidence of this?
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_pay_on_the_w...
Customers can ultimately set whatever they want as an email address there, and it's not verified in any way by Apple before completing the payment, but defaults matter: The default on my phone was my real email address from my contact card, and I did not even notice that it was preselected in the payment sheet until I got a confirmation email by the checkout system.
In an online payment context, this makes total sense to me: The merchant needs some way to identify the buyer even just for digital goods, after all. But it came very unexpected for me in a restaurant context, where I know that Apple Pay (via tap and pay) normally does not even reveal my name.
I really hope that Apple realizes the pretty big privacy gap here and starts integrating their email relay service into Apple Pay sooner rather than later, as well as making it possible to override required fields in some way.
I wish it was built into the AOSP camera app, but it's not.
In Poland we have Blik[1] for that, it's a national, standard payment process. Works with any bank, in any restaurant, no need to download an app.
Or if the staff lose interest and you want to leave and keep asking for the bill (seems to happen if you don't order alcohol)
In the civilised world, we don’t do that. Instead, the waiter brings a terminal to the table, or if they don’t have any, we go pay at the desk. Nobody gives their card to anyone. That is a problem with much better solutions than online-only menus.
If there was a way to avoid that last step, it would probably save restaurants a lot of time. Guests could leave sooner as they wouldn’t have to wait around for payment.
Sure, you could pay on the way out, but that's often painful. Many others are having the same idea, so now you have to wait around, lining up in a place that wasn't designed for people to wait around, bothering waiters who need to run around serving clients. It's usually less of a hassle to just wait around at the table for the waiter to bring the terminal to you.
My pet peeve with the terminal at the table thing is that, despite card payment being extremely common in my area, the waiter will not bring a terminal over when you ask for the check, you'll have to wait some more.
I was expecting a wireless terminal, or at least a "come to the cash when you're ready". Wireless units were probably at 75% adoption in early 2020, and went to 100% when things started to reopen as a (perceived at least) way to minimize intermingling among patrons. When I mentioned I was surprised the credit card wasn't wireless (and also did tipping on paper, not in the terminal), the waitress said she'd never even seen a wireless terminal before!
Growing up, tech in Canada always seemed to lag behind the US, and it's weird to see it the other way around.
Yeah, that’s a nice positive aspect. Personally, I don’t think it out-weights the negative ones. Too many bad experiences with badly designed digital menus.
> Sure, if you have a special case you can still ask, but for most people it's just like "OK going to give the money now".
My experience (around here, so obviously YMMV) is that waiters don’t know how to handle exceptions in these restaurants. When you have to escalate to the manager just because you have issues with the menu and the waiter hasn’t been trained properly (of course they haven’t: training costs money), it removes any positive aspect.
> No needing a waiter to come run over to the cashier to deal with you on top of everyhting else
In these cases I just walk to the bar to pay and everything is fine. It is considered rude in some settings, but then these settings are also when waiting for the bill is not acceptable.
I was pretty shocked when I first went to America and they just took all of our cards into the back. Hilariously insecure but you can't say it wasn't more efficient.
App payment seems like a good solution.
Currently the only reasonable option seems to be for one person to pay and then split the bill on Monzo - that does work well but some people don't have Monzo still.
Laws have changed over the past 20 years, but the culture around how we treat cards has not.
Making customers pay upfront is a huge “we’re too cheap to pay for waiters so the customers have to do their jobs” warning sign. They are the kind of places where you’re expected to clean the table when you leave. Ok when all you need are calories quickly, but definitely not pleasant places.
Holy heck! People do still give their credit cards to strangers to dissapear with? I last saw that in the 90's (Europe).
It seems this is a "solution" to a problem that never existed in the first place.
Option 1: Everyone orders and pays independently. Website takes payment through all the usual options + Apple/Google pay. So long as the whole table orders within 5 minutes, all the orders come through at once.
Option 2: One person sets up a tab, which generates a QR code. The other guests scan that code instead of the one at the table. People can order their own food/drinks as above until the tab owner closes the tab. If you forget to close the tab it closes itself at the close of business.
It took me quite a while to work out who was checking on the QR code.
However, I just experienced a QR code check for the first time. That was really nice .. I scanned the QR code with my iPhone, it downloaded the Toast "app clip", which allowed me to pay the bill with Apple Pay. It was totally seamless and far better than handing my credit card to a server to get lost or cloned.