As of 30 Oct 2026, the panel rates helloCash 2.5/5 and PayPal POS (Zettle) 2/5 in POS & Checkout Systems. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 5 of the 6 judges pick helloCash and 0 pick PayPal POS (Zettle), 1 calls it a tie. helloCash scores higher on 4 of 7 criteria (European sovereignty, Accounting handoff, DATEV & data export, Fiscal compliance (TSE, DSFinV-K, RKSV), plus 1 more). PayPal POS (Zettle) scores higher on 3 of 7 criteria (Card payments & fees, Pricing transparency and Checkout, receipts & hardware). Provenance — helloCash: EU-Made; PayPal POS (Zettle): EU origin, foreign-owned. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
The leaning criteria split the benches. helloCash leads accounting and portability (mean 5.7 vs 3.2; 6–0) on a stated DATEV Kassenarchiv online interface and CSV export, fiscal compliance (5.0 vs 4.0; 5 lean, 1 tie) and sovereignty (6.8 vs 3.2; 6–0), its attributes listing legal entity jurisdiction AT and EU-only data residency. PayPal POS (Zettle) leads payments and fees (6.0 vs 4.0; 6–0) on 1,39 % on all cards, no monthly fee and payouts typically within minutes, plus pricing transparency (6.5 vs 5.5; 4 lean, 2 tie). Checkout and hardware (4.0 vs 4.2; 1 lean to PayPal POS (Zettle), 5 ties) and operations and locations (4.2 vs 4.0; 1 lean to helloCash, 5 ties) sit close. Weighted totals as shown: tax adviser 5.2 vs 4.3, operations manager 4.8 vs 4.1, skeptic 5.1 vs 4.4, fee-conscious merchant 4.7 vs 4.7. No overall winner; the split is the answer.
Choose helloCash if
You need a bookkeeping handoff built on a stated DATEV Kassenarchiv online interface and CSV export — the accounting and portability lean runs 6–0 to helloCash.
Your procurement rules require an EU-only data-residency listing and an Austrian contracting entity — helloCash's sovereignty attributes state data residency EU-only and legal entity jurisdiction AT.
You must document a signature chain named for both the Austrian and German markets — 5 judges lean helloCash on fiscal compliance (mean 5.0 vs 4.0).
Your tax adviser drives the purchase decision — the weighted total reads 5.2 vs 4.3 in helloCash's favor.
Choose PayPal POS (Zettle) if
You need card costs published up front — 1,39 % on all cards, readers from 29 € plus VAT, terminals from 199 € plus VAT — and the payments and fees lean runs 6–0 to PayPal POS (Zettle).
You sell at markets and stalls and want no monthly fee and no contracts.
Your cash flow depends on payouts typically within minutes.
Your decision turns on pricing transparency — 4 judges lean PayPal POS (Zettle) there, mean 6.5 vs 5.5.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Fee-Conscious Merchant
Sells ice cream from a shop in spring and summer and from a market stall at Christmas, mostly in amounts under five euros, and more of them by card every year. Wants the fee per girocard and credit card payment on the price page, a terminal he can choose rather than the one the till insists on, hardware that runs off a battery, no monthly fee in the closed months, and the real cost of "free".
helloCash
PayPal POS (Zettle)
This judge calls it a tie.
Criterion by criterion
Checkout, receipts & hardware
helloCash
The till is an app on iOS, Android and Mac, receipts go out by email, WhatsApp or as PDF, barcode scanning is described, and a receipt printer connects over WLAN or Bluetooth, with existing laptops, PCs and tablets usable and printers purchasable from the vendor. The legal notice states a working internet connection is the only prerequisite, and I found no public information on offline operation, a customer display, or returns and cancellations — on a market stall that connection clause is what I read twice.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
The till is an app on the smartphone or tablet, the reader pairs over Bluetooth and charges over USB-C, and the WLAN/4G terminal carries the till built in — workable on a battery-run market stall — with receipts by email or text message and a barcode scanner and terminal printer with dock sold as accessories. We found no public information on discounts, split bills, returns and cancellations, or a customer display; the offline payment function is named in the terms without its limits.
Card payments & fees
helloCash
Card payments run through a connectable SumUp terminal, MasterCard, VISA, Apple Pay and Google Pay are named, the terminal is purchasable in the vendor's own shop, and only the payment amount is passed to SumUp with the success result coming back. But on the fee per girocard or credit card transaction, terminal costs and payout timing I found no public information, and girocard acceptance is not among the payment types the pages name — for my sub-five-euro sales that missing fee is the number I needed most.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
The cost page shows one published rate for all cards at 1,39 %, no monthly fee, no contracts, payouts within minutes to the PayPal business account with free scheduled bank transfers, and priced reader and terminal hardware; the Luxembourg credit institution behind the payments is named with its supervisor. There is no separate girocard rate, and we found no public information on using another terminal or acquirer with this till — the pairing documented runs their reader with a third-party till — nor on tips or split payments on the terminal.
Fiscal compliance (TSE, DSFinV-K, RKSV)
helloCash
The privacy policy names the signature providers — fiskaly Germany GmbH in Frankfurt for Germany and A-Trust in Vienna — and the till offers the Z-Bon daily closing, a cash book, an extended monthly closing and digital receipt delivery, with the KassenSichV page covering the receipt obligation, TSE duty, registration duty and DSFinV-K. I found no public information on a BSI certificate, a procedure documentation template, support for the registration duty, or a DSFinV-K export from the till itself stated outright.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
A TSE must be set up in the app when it runs as a cash register, offered free in place of costly TSE modules, a Z-Bon can be created at any time, every transaction is captured in the cloud ready for the Kassenschau, and GoBD and KassenSichV compliance is claimed on several pages. We found no public information naming the TSE provider or a BSI certificate, a DSFinV-K export, a cash book, help with the registration under § 146a AO, or a procedure documentation.
Inventory, tables, staff & locations
helloCash
Stock management with inventory counting, an employee permission system, a gastro table overview with bill splitting, and per-employee PDF/CSV reports are described, and article management carries a supplier field. I found no public information on purchase orders, a kitchen display, cancellation logs per employee, or running my shop and my Christmas market stall as two locations under one account — that last point is exactly my situation.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
Products and stock are managed with bulk upload, low-stock alerts and online-to-store sync, registers and locations can be added and removed in the back office, and each team member's sales are tracked — my shop and the Christmas stall would sit under one account. We found no public information on staff logins with roles, product variants, suppliers and purchase orders, or tables and a kitchen display.
Accounting handoff, DATEV & data export
helloCash
The pricing page names an interface to DATEV Kassenarchiv online plus a CSV export to accounting programs, API access is listed, and articles and services are exportable alongside PDF/CSV reports. I found no public information on webhooks or a developer portal, on booking card payouts and fees separately, or on a full export of customers and fiscal journals when the contract ends.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
Sales reports run in the app and on a computer dashboard with filtering by payment type, a long list of named webshop and POS integrations is published, and accounting is described only as automation with unnamed cloud bookkeeping platforms. We found no public information on a DATEV or other named accounting export, on a documented API or webhooks, or on a complete export of sales and articles when the contract ends.
European sovereignty
helloCash
The controller is mRaP GmbH in Wieselburg, Austria, data is stored in a certified computing centre in Germany, and the subprocessor list with full addresses reads European: A-Trust in Vienna and fiskaly in Frankfurt for signatures, Adyen GmbH in Berlin, PayPal in Luxembourg and Stripe in Dublin for payments, Crisp in France, Encharge in Bulgaria and Quivo in Vienna. A data processing agreement is downloadable as a PDF and a data protection officer is named, but I found no public information on ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certifications or the named hosting infrastructure, and the pages name Google and Hotjar for marketing without stating a location.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
The contracting entity is PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. et Cie, S.C.A., a Luxembourg credit institute supervised by the CSSF, and the privacy policy names standard contractual clauses, binding corporate rules within the PayPal group and Google's ReCaptcha on the websites. We found no public information on where the till and customer data are hosted, on further subprocessors in the chain, on a data processing agreement, or on certifications such as ISO 27001.
Pricing transparency
helloCash
Four plans are public — GRATIS at € 0, MEDIUM at € 990 /Monat*, PREMIUM at € 1490 /Monat* and GASTRO at € 2090 /Monat*, all excluding VAT — with a module fee of € 4,90 per module, premium support at €42,90 per year or €150 net per hour in 15-minute units, and a flexible term cancellable at any time. But on the TSE price, hardware and terminal costs, setup, card transaction fees and the scaling with tills or locations I found no public information, so the real annual cost of the free till cannot be computed from the pages. The captured pages also give different plan names: the legal notice speaks of a free till plus Classic and Premium, the pricing page of GRATIS, MEDIUM, PREMIUM and GASTRO.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
For a seasonal seller the numbers are largely on the table: no monthly fee and no contracts, 1,39 % on all cards, the reader from 29 € plus VAT (one per new business customer), additional readers at 79 € plus VAT, the terminal from 199 € plus VAT, the TSE free instead of a yearly fee, VAT treatment stated and fee changes announced thirty days in advance. The barcode scanner and the terminal printer with dock are sold separately without a published price, hardware prices are "from" prices with delivery fees on top, and individual rates sit at the vendor's sole discretion.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
helloCash
PayPal POS (Zettle)
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting location
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting options
Not determined
Not determined
Open source
Not determined
Not determined
Data processing agreement
Not determined
Not determined
Transfer impact assessment
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
Which is better, helloCash or PayPal POS (Zettle)?
As of 30 Oct 2026, the panel rates helloCash higher: 2.5/5 against 2/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 5 of the 6 judges pick helloCash and 0 pick PayPal POS (Zettle), 1 calls it a tie. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is helloCash or PayPal POS (Zettle) European?
helloCash is European (EU-Made). PayPal POS (Zettle) is European (EU origin, foreign-owned). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.
Where do helloCash and PayPal POS (Zettle) store customer data?
Per the vendors’ own pages as captured — helloCash: Default not stated; pages mention Germany. PayPal POS (Zettle): its pages as captured do not say.
Do helloCash and PayPal POS (Zettle) have a free plan?
As of 30 Oct 2026, helloCash’s own pages state a free plan; PayPal POS (Zettle)’s pages as captured do not. Each product page links the pricing page it was read from.