helloCash vs PayPal POS (Zettle)

helloCash

Sales run on apps for iOS, Android and Mac with barcode scanning in the till, receipts printed or sent by email, WhatsApp or PDF, and receipt printers connecting over WLAN or Bluetooth, purchasable from the vendor. The pages themselves state a working internet connection is the only requirement. We found no public information on offline selling, returns and cancellations, a customer display, or a published hardware compatibility list.

PayPal POS (Zettle)

The till is a free app for smartphones and tablets with a reader from 29 € plus VAT, an all-in-one terminal on WLAN or 4G, a barcode scanner add-on and a separate terminal printer and dock, and receipts can be sent by email or text; an offline payment function is mentioned. For my till I found no public information on cash drawers, a customer display, discounts, modifiers, split bills, returns and cancellations, or the limits of offline selling.

helloCash

A SumUp card terminal connects to the till and can be bought in the vendor's onlineshop, MasterCard, VISA, Apple Pay and Google Pay are named, and Adyen, PayPal, Stripe and SumUp appear as payment processors with their addresses; only the payment amount is passed to SumUp, so nothing needs retyping. We found no public information on transaction fees per card type, girocard, terminal prices, payout timing, or using an acquirer of my own choice.

PayPal POS (Zettle)

Payments run through PayPal's own reader or terminal with a published 1.39 % for all cards, tap to pay on the phone covering credit and debit cards plus Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay, no monthly fee or contracts, and payouts typically within minutes to the PayPal business account with free scheduled transfers to my bank. The Luxembourg credit institution behind it is named; I found no public information on girocard, tips or split payments on the terminal, reconciliation of card payments to the daily closing, or using an acquirer of my own choice.

helloCash

The signature chain is named for both markets: fiskaly Germany in Frankfurt for the German electronic signature and A-Trust in Vienna for the Austrian side, with FinanzOnline also listed. The register produces a Z-Bon closing and a cash book, receipts go out digitally, and the free register is said to fulfil all legal requirements. We found no public information on a BSI certificate for the TSE, a DSFinV-K export from the product itself, help with registering the till, or a procedure documentation template.

PayPal POS (Zettle)

The pages state GoBD and KassenSichV compliance, require setting up a TSE in the app for register use, generate a Z-Bon at any time and store every transaction encrypted in the cloud so I am ready for a Kassenschau. For an audit I found no public information naming the TSE provider, its BSI certificate, the DSFinV-K export for my tax adviser, a procedure documentation, the ten-year archive, or Austrian RKSV rules.

helloCash

Stock management with stocktaking and a staff permission system come in the plans by default, articles can carry their supplier, reports come per employee, and gastro gets a table view and split invoices. For my two shops this is not enough: we found no public information on a second branch under one account, stock transfers between branches, colour or size variants per article, or purchase orders and reorder proposals.

PayPal POS (Zettle)

I can manage products with stock tracking, low-stock alerts, bulk upload of thousands of articles, online-to-store stock sync, gift vouchers, staff performance tracking and real-time reports, with registers and locations added or removed at my.zettle.com. For my two branches I found no public information on colour variants for my four thousand articles, suppliers and purchase orders, transfers between the shops, cross-branch stock visibility, or staff logins with roles and rights.

helloCash

There is a stated interface to DATEV Kassenarchiv online plus CSV export to accounting programs, an extended month-end closing, an article export and stated API access — the month's sales reaching my tax adviser without a USB stick is exactly what I need, and the tax adviser is even named as a data recipient. We found no public information on booking with revenue accounts, webhooks or a developer portal, or a complete export of customers and receipts after cancellation.

PayPal POS (Zettle)

The pages promise to automate bookkeeping "mit cloudbasierten Buchhaltungsplattformen" and show real-time sales reports filterable by payment type, yet I found no public information naming an accounting tool; the named integrations are webshops and third-party POS systems. I also found no public information on a DATEV export, booking with revenue accounts and tax rates, an API with webhooks, or a full export of articles, customers and sales when the contract ends.

helloCash

The contracting entity is mRaP GmbH in Wieselburg, Austria, data is secured in a certified data centre in Germany, the signature runs through A-Trust in Vienna and fiskaly in Frankfurt, and the payment processors Adyen, PayPal and Stripe are listed with their addresses. A data processing agreement is downloadable, a data protection officer is named, and most subprocessors carry their locations. We found no public information on ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certifications, and the marketing tools Google, Facebook and Hotjar come without stated safeguards.

PayPal POS (Zettle)

German merchants contract with PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. et Cie, S.C.A., a Luxembourg credit institution supervised by the CSSF, though the group's parent sits in San Jose; my till data is stored encrypted in a cloud whose location the pages do not state, with third-country transfers on EU standard contractual clauses and binding corporate rules. Google appears through ReCaptcha, and I found no public information on a subprocessor list with locations, EU hosting, or ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certifications for the POS chain.

helloCash

Four plans from GRATIS at € 0 up to a gastro plan are published with monthly figures, all excluding VAT, plus a module fee of € 4,90 per module, premium support at € 42,90 a year or € 150 per hour net in 15-minute units, a 30-day trial, and a flexible term cancellable at any time. The captured pricing page and its extracted figures give different values for the paid plan prices, so I leave the digits unquoted. We found no public information on the TSE fee, hardware prices, terminal costs, card fees, or how the price scales with a second till, so I cannot compute the annual cost for my two shops.

PayPal POS (Zettle)

The core costs are public: no monthly software fee, no contracts or recurring charges, 1.39 % on all cards, the reader at 29 € plus VAT for new business customers and 79 € plus VAT for each additional one, terminals from 199 € plus VAT, shop kits from 229 € plus VAT, delivery fees with one to two working days, and fee changes announced 30 days in advance. The barcode scanner is only "gegen Aufpreis", the printer, dock and scanner-equipped terminal only "separat erhältlich", the free TSE offer carries an asterisk to the cash-register service terms, and I found no public information on setup or support prices.