Full-service, QSR, bars & cafés
Restaurants run on margins thinner than the menu paper. The wrong processor costs you more than tips on a slow Tuesday — bad tip handling, slow checks, and surprise interchange downgrades quietly bleed three to five points of net margin a year. Xray Payment configures restaurant accounts the way restaurant operators would if they wrote the contract themselves.
Why generic processing fails Restaurants.
Tip math at midnight
Server tipouts, busser shares, kitchen pools, credit-card tip lag — most processors hand you a CSV and walk away.
Open tabs that haunt batch
Pre-auths timing out, tabs left open at last call, voids that don't void cleanly — and adjustments that downgrade interchange.
Split checks that take five swipes
Even/by-item/by-guest splits that lock the line at the door while the party of eight finishes math on their phones.
"Just key it in" emergencies
Phone orders, catering invoices, deposits — keyed entries that get hit with the highest interchange tier and no PCI scope plan.
What Xray actually configures for Restaurants.
Pooled tip distribution by hours worked
Configurable house rules — server keeps 70%, kitchen pool gets 20%, busser 10% — auto-calculated and exported to payroll.
Pre-auth + incremental capture
Open a $25 hold when the tab starts, capture the actual total with tip at close. No re-auth, no downgrades, no haunted batch.
One-tap check splitting
Split-by-item, split-evenly, or split-by-guest-count built into the workflow on Clover, Valor, and Dejavoo Android terminals.
Tokenized phone-order vault
Catering deposits and house-account customers stored as tokens, not card numbers — qualifies for card-present rates on repeat charges.
The terminals we ship for Restaurants.
Every device pre-configured for your account, menu, and tip prompts before it ships.
Clover Station Duo
Front-of-house workhorse. Customer-facing display drives tips 12-18% higher; built-in printer and drawer-driver.
Clover Flex
Tableside flagship. Run the check at the table, capture the tip, print there — your servers save 8-12 minutes per turn.
Dejavoo P8 Dual Screen
Best alternative to Clover when you want lower long-term cost. Same tip + dual-screen flow on AURA.
Valor VP800
Premium Android tablet POS — works great for bars and high-volume QSR.
Programs we run
Configured on your account before activation.
- Cash discount — legally pass card costs to the customer, common in QSR
- Surcharge — 3% added to credit cards (debit always pays the lower rate)
- Pre-auth with incremental capture (the "open tab" pattern)
- Tip adjustment with auto-batch — no manual settlement at close
- Recurring billing for catering retainers and house accounts
Software & integrations
Bidirectional, real-time wherever supported.
- Toast guest manager via Zapier
- Aloha menu sync (Clover Pro)
- OpenTable, Resy, Yelp Reservations
- QuickBooks Online, Xero
- 7shifts payroll and tip-pool export
- DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub via Clover Online Ordering
Features tuned for Restaurants.
What it looks like on a Tuesday.
Friday night at a 90-seat dining room: server opens a $1 pre-auth on the Flex when the party sits, fires courses to the KDS, splits the check three ways at the table, hands the Flex to each guest for tip + signature. Bartender at the same time runs a fast tab on Station Duo. End of shift, manager closes the day with one batch — tip pool runs automatically, $4,200 in tips distributed across 12 employees by hours worked. Sunday morning the owner reviews the daypart report on her phone with coffee.
Why generic processors fall short.
Most processors sell you "restaurant pricing" that turns out to be a flat-rate plan ill-suited to small ticket counts. Generic plans don't handle the open-tab pattern, force you to add gratuity manually, and downgrade pre-auths to "non-qualified" interchange — costing you 80 basis points on every adjusted transaction. We build the account from the interchange table up, with tip-adjustment-aware settlement and Level 2 data on every house account.
The actual math.
A $1.2M-revenue full-service restaurant on a typical "flat 2.6% + $0.10" plan pays about $31,200/year in card fees. We rebuild that same account at an effective 2.18% — saving roughly $5,000/year on volume alone. Add tip-prompt uplift (typical 12% lift on tippable tickets = $14,400 more to staff, lower turnover) and you net real annual gains in the five-figure range.
Restaurants questions, straight answers.
Can I keep my POS and just switch processors?
Almost always yes — most modern restaurant POS systems (Clover, Toast, Aloha, Square for Restaurants, Lavu, Lightspeed) accept third-party processing. We do this every week.
Will my tip totals show on the same statement?
Yes. We report gross sales, tips, fees, and net deposits separately on every monthly statement — no math required.
Can you handle online ordering?
Yes — Clover Online Ordering ships with your terminal, or we integrate with Toast Takeout, DoorDash Drive, Uber Direct, and Grubhub for Restaurants.
How fast can we start?
Three business days from signed paperwork to hardware-at-your-door. Same-day approval for most independents.
