Payzium versus Toast: restaurant POS plus a blended card rate.
Toast wins for restaurants that want an all-in-one POS with kitchen tickets, online ordering, and staff scheduling built in. Payzium wins as a card processor when the restaurant has (or wants) its own POS software and needs a published, honest merchant rate.
- In card processing since 2014
- Next-day funding
- Terminal included¹
- Posted pricing
Your volume, against Toast.
$2,968
About $247 a month back in your business compared with Toast, and $8,905 over three years.
How your price is built
At $40,000 a month in card sales
- Network costs (interchange and assessments), passed through at cost
- $631.64
- Payzium margin
- $72.00
- Payzium per-transaction fees
- $40.00
- Monthly account fee
- $5.00
- Your total a month
- $748.64
- Effective rate
- 1.87%
Estimate on Payzium's published US rate card and live US Visa and Mastercard interchange schedules, $50 average ticket. Competitor figures from each processor's published US rates. Final pricing depends on your actual card mix and current network rates.
Toast: what the fees page publishes.
| Line | Rate |
|---|---|
| Card-present, Traditional plan (hardware bought upfront, software monthly) | 2.49% [1] |
| Card-present, Pay-as-you-Go plan ($0 hardware, $0 software) | 3.09% on every transaction [1] |
| Card-not-present and keyed | Not published on Toast's pricing pages; quoted per restaurant [2] |
| Fee | Amount |
|---|---|
| Software: Starter Kit (Pay-as-you-Go) | $0 per month, processing at the Pay-as-you-Go rate [3] |
| Software: Point of Sale plan | Starting at $69 per month [4] |
| Software: Point of Sale plus Payroll bundle | $69 per month plus $9 per employee per month [5] |
Toast hardware. The Starter Kit hardware is included at no upfront cost on the Pay-as-you-Go plan and owned from day one; on the Traditional plan it is bought outright. Larger kitchen and handheld orders are purchased separately. [6]
Sources.
- Card-present 2.49% (Traditional plan) and 3.09% (Pay-as-you-Go). Verified 2026-09-08. https://pos.toasttab.com/shop/starter-kits
- Card-not-present rate not published; processing-fees page states custom pricing. Verified 2026-09-08. https://pos.toasttab.com/payments/payment-processing-fees
- Starter Kit starting at $0 per month. Verified 2026-09-08. https://pos.toasttab.com/pricing
- Point of Sale plan starting at $69 per month. Verified 2026-09-08. https://pos.toasttab.com/pricing
- Point of Sale plus Payroll bundle $69 per month plus $9 per employee. Verified 2026-09-08. https://pos.toasttab.com/pricing
- Starter Kit hardware terms by plan. Verified 2026-09-08. https://pos.toasttab.com/shop/starter-kits
Toast contract candor.
- Toast's Pay-as-you-Go plan trades the upfront hardware cost and the monthly software fee for a higher processing rate on every transaction; the Traditional plan pays for hardware upfront and software monthly to get the lower rate.
- Toast payments and Toast software are bundled by contract; a merchant leaving Toast software also leaves the Toast payments rate.
- Toast publishes a card-present rate but not a card-not-present rate. The online-order and keyed rate is quoted per restaurant, and it is the line takeout-heavy restaurants should ask for before signing.
Where Toast wins.
- Purpose-built restaurant workflow: kitchen tickets, coursing, floor plan, online ordering, gift cards, loyalty.
- Handhelds and pay-at-the-table are strong and battle-tested.
- Native integrations with the restaurant ecosystem (delivery, scheduling, accounting).
Where Payzium wins.
- A restaurant on its own POS or on a specialty POS (Square for Restaurants, Lightspeed) can take Payzium's published-margin rate and keep its software choice.
- Payzium does not bundle the merchant's card rate to a software subscription. Program A and Program B are transparent regardless of the POS the restaurant uses.
- Payzium's dual pricing program is a strong fit for takeout-heavy restaurants, where the alternative's online-order rate is quoted rather than published.
Worked example.
Payzium all-in effective rate on this fixture
1.87%
This is the same rate shown across the site. See the full monthly breakdown on the calculator.
FAQ.
Do I have to leave Toast to use Payzium?
Payzium is the card processor. If a restaurant is on Toast software with Toast payments, it can move payments off Toast if its contract allows; the software side is between the restaurant and Toast.
Can Payzium price a takeout-heavy restaurant fairly?
Yes. Payzium prices interchange-plus on Program A regardless of channel, so a restaurant with heavy takeout volume pays a fair CNP rate that reflects actual interchange rather than a blended card-not-present rate.
Ready to see the numbers on your business?
Run your monthly volume through the calculator and see the exact all-in figure your Payzium account would carry.