Toast Merchant Services – Benefits and Drawbacks of Processing Payments with the Toast POS

Toast is one of the premier merchant services providers in the restaurant industry, offering a full suite of products and services designed specifically to help restaurateurs do business and accept payments. But with so many POS systems and payment processors available on the market, determining whether Toast is the right partner can be difficult for even the most experienced restaurateurs. To help make the decision easier, the following is a high-level overview of the major benefits and drawbacks that Toast merchant services offer restaurant owners. 

Benefit: A One-Stop Solution for Restaurateurs

While toast offers a number of merchant services, their flagship product is their point-of-sale system — arguably one of the most popular POS systems in the restaurant industry. Partnering with Toast provides restaurants with a single, unified monthly bill and a near-turnkey system covering everything from their point-of-sale software to their payment hardware to their processing and beyond. The convenience that a single-vendor solution offers is appealing to many restaurateurs and is a major contributor to Toast’s success in the industry. 

Benefit: An Industry-Centric Partner

A major strength of Toast is that they’re essentially a one-industry company, focusing solely on the restaurant business. That specialization affords Toast a deeper understanding of the problems restaurateurs face than may be available through processing partners that work across a wider set of industries. Access to processing solutions, software, and hardware designed specifically for the industry can make some restaurateurs feel more comfortable. While most processors can deliver fantastic service to the restaurant industry without a problem, narrow specialization does add to Toast’s overall value proposition. 

Benefit: Flexible Payment Systems

Toast Merchant Services offers restaurants a wide variety of payment systems designed specifically for the unique needs of the industry, including the post-COVID “new normal.” Payment systems include:

Toast Order & Pay: A web ordering system that allows customers to order and pay from their own smart devices. 

Toast Go 2: Mobile payment terminals that enable restaurants to take card payments tableside, curbside, or anywhere else as needed. 

Toast Tap: EMV-compliant contactless payment solutions that enable customers to pay without touching anything — a must in an increasingly cashless and contactless world. 

Toast Flex: Toast’s flagship POS system, including all the necessary hardware to run restaurant operations from a fixed, on-counter area.

Toast Digital Ordering: Traditional web-based ordering enabling customers to place an order and pay from home prior to delivery or pickup in-store. 

Drawback: High Fees

The major downside of Toast Merchant Services is the cost. While Toast’s processing fees are negotiable, they’re generally not published online, and for a good reason: the convenience the Toast system offers comes at a price. First and foremost, Toast’s POS can only run on Toast hardware, which means restaurants are locked into Toast’s hardware fees whether they have pre-existing Apple or Android equipment or not.

Even more concerning are Toast’s processing fees. While Toast’s full fee schedule isn’t published, statements published online by users in the past have shown Toast processing fees as high as 3.5% + $0.15 per transaction — an enormous number compared to what restaurateurs could expect to pay with a traditional merchant account. 

Whether or not those high fees are worth the convenience and feature-richness of the Toast POS is a decision for each restauranteur to make individually, but many merchants in the industry find that a combination of a standalone merchant account and one of the many other POS systems on the market provide the quality and functionality they need at a much lower cost. 

BAMS offers restaurateurs guaranteed-low transaction fees thanks to our interchange-plus pricing model — the most affordable and transparent pricing system available in the industry. BAMS restaurateurs also have access to a wide variety of POS systems and payment solutions, as well as advanced fraud protection, gift and loyalty programs, next-day funding, and much more. 

To find out more about how a BAMS merchant account can help your restaurant minimize your monthly merchant statement, click here now to get started with a custom BAMS five-point price comparison.