Tipping on EFTPOS: How It Works and What It Costs

Eftpos tipping is a terminal feature that lets the customer add a tip when they pay. The merchant sets the options in advance — fixed dollar amounts like $2, $5 or $10, or percentages like 5%, 10% or 20% — and the customer sees the prompt on screen at checkout and picks one, or skips it.

I’ll be honest: when it’s put in front of me, I don’t always tip. But there’s a bit of pressure there when the option pops up. Not every bank offers it, not every customer loves it, and — the part most merchants don’t realise until they hit it — not every point-of-sale setup can offer it either. But a lot of merchants love having it, for reasons that go beyond the tip itself.

How it actually works

The merchant sets the tipping parameters: a handful of fixed dollar amounts, a handful of percentages, or both. It shows up on the terminal at the point of payment, the customer presses a button, the tip gets added to the bill, and it’s paid in the one transaction. Some acquirers offer it — ANZ, for instance, who run on the Worldline platform, do.

Here’s the part that trips people up. Whether you can offer tipping isn’t just about your bank or your terminal. It depends on whether your point-of-sale system supports it too.

A terminal today is basically just an Android device — the hardware doesn’t decide what it can do, the software on it does. If you’re running standalone (just the terminal, no point-of-sale system behind it), it’s down to your acquirer. If you’re running an integrated setup — a point-of-sale system talking to the terminal — tipping has to be built into that integration by the point-of-sale provider, not just switched on by the acquirer. Seeing tipping working on the exact same terminal model at another business tells you nothing about whether you can get it, because the difference is the software layer sitting behind it, not the box on the counter.

A real example

I had a case recently with a group of seven restaurants. The owner wanted tipping, and the acquirer — ANZ — offers it. But the restaurants’ point-of-sale system didn’t have tipping integrated, so it wasn’t available even though the bank side was ready.

The bank actually rang me to ask what they should do. My advice was to push the point-of-sale provider to build the integration — and if they wouldn’t, there are point-of-sale options that already have it built in. From the point-of-sale provider’s side, it’s a real cost-benefit call: they’re weighing the cost of building the integration against how many of their merchants are actually asking for it, against what they’re making from that one client’s SaaS fees. For a single client on, say, $200 a month, that’s roughly $2,400 a year in fees — nowhere near enough to justify tens of thousands of dollars in integration cost. So sometimes the provider decides it isn’t worth it, and the merchant misses out, not because their bank can’t do it, but because their software vendor won’t.

Why restaurants push for it anyway

The obvious reason merchants want tipping is that it puts more money in their staff’s pockets. I’ve seen this play out directly: a restaurant kept tipping switched on because staff — on what was largely minimum wage — were picking up a couple of hundred dollars extra a week in tips. That solved a rostering problem the business had struggled with for a long time. Once staff were earning noticeably more, the business stopped losing shifts to no-shows and last-minute drop-outs.

That’s worth real money to an owner, well beyond what it costs to run. I’ve had merchants tell a broker outright: it doesn’t matter if another provider is a fraction cheaper — if they don’t offer tipping, it’s not an option. Staff retention and morale, especially with cost-of-living pressure hitting hospitality wages, has made tipping one of the more important features a payments setup can offer, not just a nice-to-have.

What to check before you ask for it

If you want tipping on your setup, check your acquirer supports it first, then check with your point-of-sale provider — don’t assume that because the terminal can technically do it, your system will let you turn it on. If your current point-of-sale vendor hasn’t built the integration, ask them directly whether they will, and get a straight answer rather than a maybe.

If you want a hand comparing which providers and machines actually support tipping for your setup, get in touch — that’s exactly the kind of thing worth checking before you commit to a provider, not after.

FAQ

What is eftpos tipping?

A feature that lets a customer add a tip at the terminal when they pay, using fixed dollar amounts or percentages the merchant sets in advance.

Does every eftpos machine support tipping?

Not automatically. The terminal hardware itself doesn’t decide it — it depends on whether your acquirer offers tipping and, if you’re on an integrated point-of-sale system, whether that system has built the tipping feature into its integration.

Why doesn’t my point-of-sale system offer tipping even though my bank does?

Because tipping on an integrated setup has to be built by the point-of-sale provider, not just switched on by the bank. Some providers haven’t built it because the cost of the integration doesn’t stack up against how many of their merchants are asking for it.

Is tipping worth it for a small business?

For hospitality in particular, often yes — beyond the extra income for staff, better-paid staff can mean fewer rostering and retention problems, which has real value to the business on top of the tips themselves.

Do all banks offer tipping?

No. Some acquirers offer it and some don’t, so it’s worth checking directly with your provider rather than assuming.