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 Skeptic
Has seen a "free" till paid for twice over in card fees, printers that work with one vendor's software only, a TSE charged by the year on top of the licence, and a cancelled contract that left ten years of fiscal journals behind a login. Reads "100 % finanzamtkonform" with no TSE provider named and "DATEV-ready" with no export format — and asks what leaving would cost.
helloCash
This judge's pick
PayPal POS (Zettle)
Criterion by criterion
Checkout, receipts & hardware
helloCash
A cloud till with apps for iOS, Android and Mac, receipts printed via WLAN or Bluetooth printers or sent as PDF, by email or WhatsApp, plus a gastro table view with bill splitting and an individual receipt layout. The vendor sells the printers itself but names no compatibility list, and states a working internet connection is the sole prerequisite — so we found no public information on offline selling; returns, cancellations and a customer display are not described on the captured pages either.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
A free till app on iOS and Android phones and tablets runs the sale, with the vendor's own reader from 29 €, an all-in-one terminal from 199 € and printer & dock plus barcode scanner sold separately; receipts go out by email or SMS and a Z-Bon can be generated at any time. We found no public information on modifiers, discounts, split bills, returns and cancellations, a customer display or a supported-hardware list, and the offline payment feature appears in the legal terms without its limits stated.
Card payments & fees
helloCash
Card payments run through a named SumUp terminal that the vendor sells in its own onlineshop, with MasterCard, VISA, Apple Pay and Google Pay listed. Beyond that we found no public information on transaction fees, terminal cost, payout timing or girocard — on a free till, where card fees are usually what pays for the software, that is the number a buyer cannot compute.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
Card payments ride on the vendor's own chain: a Luxembourg credit institution supervised by the CSSF is named, the fee is published as "Alle Karten: 1,39 %", tap to pay covers Apple, Google and Samsung Pay at no extra fee, and money typically reaches the PayPal business account within minutes. We found no public information on girocard as a named card type, tips or split payments on the terminal, or running a third-party acquirer instead — the pairing offered is the vendor's reader with a third-party till, not another acquirer's terminal with this till.
Fiscal compliance (TSE, DSFinV-K, RKSV)
helloCash
The signature providers are named and European — fiskaly Germany for German signatures, A-Trust in Vienna with FinanzOnline for Austria — beside daily closings in several forms (Z-Bon as receipt or PDF, automatic and extended) and a Kassenbuch. But the pricing page lists only "TSE-Vorbereitung" among the base functions, and we found no public information on the BSI certificate, a Verfahrensdokumentation template, GoBD ten-year storage or an explicit DSFinV-K export offer beyond explaining the regulation.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
The till is called "finanzamtkonform", a TSE must be set up in the app with a manual guide, Z-Bons are generatable at any time and all transactions are captured automatically and stored encrypted in the cloud. We found no public information on the TSE provider, a DSFinV-K export, the form of the receipt obligation, a Verfahrensdokumentation or a Kassennachschau handover, and the privacy notice names seven years for bookkeeping while no page describes a ten-year fiscal archive.
Inventory, tables, staff & locations
helloCash
Stock management with inventory counting, an employee permission system, per-employee PDF and CSV reports, article management with a supplier field, customer management and gastro tables with bill splitting are documented. We found no public information on article variants or modifiers, a kitchen display or kitchen printer, or managing several branches or tills under one account.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
Products with stock tracking, bulk upload of thousands of articles, low-stock alerts and stock sync between online shop and store are described, each team member's sales are trackable, and registers and locations can be managed, added and removed under one account. We found no public information on variants, staff logins with roles and rights, cash differences per employee, tables, a kitchen display or kitchen printer, or cross-site reporting.
Accounting handoff, DATEV & data export
helloCash
A DATEV Kassenarchiv online interface, CSV export to accounting programs, individual tax rates, an article and service export and an API access line item are published. The API shows no documentation or webhooks on the captured pages, card payouts and fees are not shown as reconciled to the books, and we found no public information on what export of sales, customers or fiscal journals a merchant receives when the contract ends — the question that decides whether ten years of records stay behind a login.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
The integrations page lists a dozen named webshop and POS partners plus a generic promise to automate bookkeeping with cloud accounting platforms, but we found no public information on DATEV or any named accounting export, booking data with revenue accounts and tax rates, a documented API, or a complete export of articles, customers, sales and fiscal journals when the contract ends. Sales reports run in-app and on a dashboard; the format in which figures leave the system is not shown.
European sovereignty
helloCash
The chain is largely European and unusually well documented: mRaP GmbH in Wieselburg with Austrian register data, data secured in a certified computing centre in Germany, fiskaly in Frankfurt and A-Trust in Vienna for signatures, Adyen in Berlin, PayPal in Luxembourg and Stripe in Dublin for payments, a downloadable data processing agreement and a named data protection officer. What keeps it from the top: the hosting facility itself is not named, no ISO or SOC certification is stated, marketing runs through Google, Facebook and Hotjar and administration through Microsoft Office, and the team.blue group is said to exchange data internally between its brands.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
The contracting entity is PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. et Cie, S.C.A., a Luxembourg credit institution supervised by the CSSF, transfers to third countries rest on EU standard contractual clauses and intra-group binding rules, Google ReCaptcha is named as a service used, personal data is stated not to be sold, and PCI-DSS Level 1 is claimed. But where the cloud till and its fiscal data are hosted we found no public information, we found no public information on a full subprocessor list or a data processing agreement, and the parent is PayPal Holdings, Inc. of San Jose, USA.
Pricing transparency
helloCash
Four plans are published with monthly figures and marked as excluding VAT, plus a € 4,90 per-module fee, premium support at €42,90 per year or €150 net per hour in 15-minute units, a free tier, a 30-day trial and "jederzeit kündbar". The captured pages give different figures for the lineup — the legal notice names a Classic tier the pricing page's four models do not list — and we found no public information on TSE fees, hardware or terminal prices, card transaction fees, or how plans scale with tills and locations.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
The core costs are public: no monthly fee and no contracts, "Alle Karten: 1,39 %" per transaction, the TSE function presented as a free alternative to costly TSE modules, readers at 29 € for new business customers and 79 € additional, terminals from 199 € and shop kits from 229 € each plus VAT, payouts and scheduled bank transfers without extra fees. The rest stays open: delivery fees without amounts, printer & dock and barcode scanner named as extras without prices, from-prices whose ceiling is unknown, fees changeable on 30 days' notice with individual rates at the vendor's sole discretion, and no priced setup or support plans.
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.