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 Tax Adviser
Looks after the books of sixty restaurants, bakeries and shops and has sat in on more than one unannounced Kassennachschau. Wants the TSE named with its certificate, a DSFinV-K export that opens in the auditor's software, the § 146a registration done, a procedure documentation that exists before it is asked for, a DATEV export with the right revenue accounts, and ten years of records still readable after the client changes tills.
helloCash
This judge's pick
PayPal POS (Zettle)
Criterion by criterion
Checkout, receipts & hardware
helloCash
A cloud till with an app for iOS, Android and Mac, receipts printed or sent by e-mail, WhatsApp or PDF, receipt printers over WLAN or Bluetooth, and existing laptops, PCs and tablets usable with devices buyable from the vendor; gastro tables with bill splitting are listed. The vendor states a working internet connection is the only requirement and we found no public information on an offline mode, and no compatibility list, returns and cancellations, modifiers or a customer display are described.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
The till runs as a free app from the App Store and Google Play with an article library, bulk product upload and stock tracking, receipts by email or SMS, and hardware the vendor sells itself — reader from 29 €, an all-in-one terminal with WLAN and 4G from 199 €, printer & dock and barcode scanner sold separately. What the captured pages leave out is what my shopkeepers ask for first: modifiers, split bills, returns and cancellations, a cash drawer or customer display, and an offline mode with its limits — only the terms mention an offline payment function at all.
Card payments & fees
helloCash
Card taking runs through a SumUp terminal that can be bought in the vendor's own onlineshop, MasterCard, VISA, Apple Pay and Google Pay are named, and Adyen, PayPal and Stripe appear as named payment providers. We found no public information on transaction fees by card type, terminal or payout costs, payout timing, girocard, or whether a terminal and acquirer of the merchant's own choosing can be used.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
Card taking is the heart of the product: reader, terminal and Tap to Pay on the phone taking credit and debit cards plus Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay, with "Alle Karten: 1,39 %" published, money "in der Regel innerhalb weniger Minuten" on the PayPal business account and free scheduled transfers to the bank, all behind a named Luxembourg payment institution under the CSSF. But the pages show a single acquirer — PayPal itself, with individual tariffs at its sole discretion — girocard is not named by card type, and nothing reconciles card takings to the daily closing.
Fiscal compliance (TSE, DSFinV-K, RKSV)
helloCash
TSE-Vorbereitung and KassenSichV sit in the base features, fiskaly Germany GmbH is named as the signature service for use in Germany and A-Trust for Austria, receipts go out printed, by e-mail or WhatsApp, and the daily closing (Z-Bon), cash book and the KassenSichV obligations including the DSFinV-K data handover are described. We found no public information on a BSI certificate for the TSE, an explicit DSFinV-K export of the till itself, ten-year GoBD storage, help with the § 146a registration, or a procedure documentation.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
The pages promise GoBD and KassenSichV conformity, a TSE that must be set up in the app with a guide in the user manual, Z-Bons "jederzeit" and every transaction stored in the cloud so you are "jederzeit auf die Kassenschau vorbereitet". Nowhere do they name the TSE provider or a BSI certificate, the DSFinV-K export, a Verfahrensdokumentation or help with the § 146a registration, and no second country's fiscal rules appear — before I let a client face an unannounced Kassennachschau, that export has to be named.
Inventory, tables, staff & locations
helloCash
Stock management and stocktaking, an article module where the supplier can be recorded, a staff permission system with unlimited users, per-employee PDF and CSV reports and gastro tables with bill splitting are all described. We found no public information on a kitchen display or kitchen printer, article variants, purchase orders, per-employee cancellation logs, or managing several branches and tills from one back office.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
Articles with stock tracking, bulk upload and low-stock alerts, online and store inventory kept in sync, gift vouchers, real-time sales reports filterable by payment type, staff performance tracking, and registers and locations managed under one account. The captured pages give no variants or modifiers, no suppliers and purchase orders, no tables, kitchen display or self-order, no staff logins with rights, and no cash differences per employee — that is half a back office.
Accounting handoff, DATEV & data export
helloCash
A DATEV Kassenarchiv online interface and a CSV export to accounting programmes are listed, API access is a stated feature, articles and services are exportable, and the cash book with extended monthly closing covers the period end. We found no public information on booking to revenue accounts by tax rate, reconciliation of card payouts and fees, webhooks or a developer portal, or a complete export including fiscal data when the contract ends.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
Sixteen named integrations are listed, from Shopify and WooCommerce to JTL-POS, Lightspeed and plentyPOS, plus a generic promise of automating bookkeeping with cloud accounting platforms. But no accounting tool is named, DATEV appears nowhere, no API is documented, and nothing says what a merchant may export — articles, sales, fiscal journal — when the contract ends; for sixty clients on DATEV that silence decides it.
European sovereignty
helloCash
The contracting entity is mRaP GmbH of Wieselburg, Austria (FN 412051h), data is held in a certified data centre in Germany, a data processing agreement is downloadable with a named data protection officer, and the subprocessor list gives locations: fiskaly in Frankfurt, A-Trust in Vienna, Adyen in Berlin, PayPal in Luxembourg, Stripe in Dublin, Crisp in France, Encharge in Bulgaria and Quivo in Vienna. The data centre itself is not named, ownership is not evidenced, Microsoft, Google, Hotjar and Facebook sit in the chain for administration and marketing, and no ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certification is stated.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
The contracting entity is named and European — PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. et Cie, S.C.A., a Luxembourg credit institute under the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier — and the privacy policy discloses third-country transfers under EU standard contractual clauses, binding corporate rules within the group, and Google ReCaptcha on the website, with the ownership trail leading to the USA. Where the till's data is hosted is stated nowhere and the subprocessor chain — cloud TSE, payment processing, receipt delivery, analytics — is not listed; a privacy policy is not a hosting location.
Pricing transparency
helloCash
Four plans are published with exact monthly figures — GRATIS € 0, MEDIUM € 990 /Monat*, PREMIUM € 1490 /Monat*, GASTRO € 2090 /Monat*, all exkl. USt — plus a Modulgebühr of € 4,90 pro Modul, Premium Support at €42,90 per year or €150 netto exkl. USt per hour in 15-minute units, free configuration support and a flexible term cancellable at any time. We found no public information on the TSE fee, hardware prices in the shop, card transaction fees, or how cost scales with the number of tills or locations.
PayPal POS (Zettle)
A buyer gets far on the public pages: no monthly fee, "Keine Verträge oder wiederkehrenden Gebühren", "Alle Karten: 1,39 %", reader from 29 € zzgl. MwSt., terminal from 199 € zzgl. MwSt., additional readers 79 € zzgl. MwSt., the TSE software free of monthly charge, VAT treatment stated, payouts and scheduled transfers without extra fees. What stays open: printer, dock and barcode scanner are "separat erhältlich" without prices, delivery fees apply but are unquantified, fees are charged per payment type while only two rates are published, and rates may change on 30 days' notice with individual tariffs 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.