Mobile payments for restaurants: get paid by card, cash or mobile wallet

Card processors and mobile wallet providers offer business accounts for taking in-person payments. Before you put "Cards and mobile wallets accepted" on your menu, check which merchant account your restaurant can open, which account receives the funds and who on your team can see payment confirmations. Read the provider's current terms, fees, limits and paperwork when you sign up.

Never have guests pay into a staff member's personal account unless the owner has approved a clear procedure. Keep the business account, staff access and the person responsible for reconciliation separate. When shifts change, every payment should still be traceable to the business.

The Zeat QR code on the table opens a mobile menu where guests see your dishes and prices. A payment QR code, if your provider offers one, starts a payment to the account it's linked to. Both codes can sit in the same restaurant without being connected. Walk your floor staff through the difference so no server points a guest to the wrong one.

Before the guest scans or taps to pay, confirm the items and the total on the check. Have them check the merchant name shown and the amount entered, following your provider's process. If a guest pays the wrong amount, your team then has to track down the difference or ask for a second payment.

A guest can show you a confirmation screen, but whoever is serving should check the payment on the merchant side, in whatever tool your provider gives you. Match the table, the amount and the transaction ID or time. If nothing shows up, tell the guest you're checking the payment status before you ask them to try again.

Plan for what really happens: a slow connection, a wrong amount, a pending transaction, a guest who switches to another payment method. Retrying too quickly can lead to a double charge. Your manager should know who to contact and how to document a correction or a refund with the provider.

At the end of the shift, compare the checks marked as paid by card or wallet with the confirmed transactions in your merchant tool. Note any payments received but not matched to a table, any pending amounts and any differences. Keep cash and each payment method in separate columns. A recorded sale alone doesn't prove the money came in.

If another register or a spreadsheet is used for the daily report, decide who enters the totals and when. Reconciliation should let you find any transaction without asking a server to remember every table. Until you've seen a specific automation work, this check is part of how your restaurant runs, not something the software does for you.

Zeat gives you a QR code menu your team can update with dishes and prices. Zeat also handles orders placed by guests or staff and sends them to the kitchen and bar. That gives you a clean check to present. It doesn't mean Zeat is connected to your payment provider or confirms transactions automatically.

During a demo, order a dish and a drink, add an item, then pay the check with the merchant account you actually use. Ask to see where your team reads the amount and where they find the confirmation. Note the manual steps, and check each feature in a demo before you change how you take payment.