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POS & Checkout Systems

SumUp POS

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by SumUp Limited · www.sumup.com

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SumUp POS at a glance

Vendor
SumUp Limited
Headquarters
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 29 Oct 2026
Data hosting
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 29 Oct 2026
Free plan
Yes, per the vendor’s own page source, captured 29 Oct 2026
Panel verdict
The AI panel rates SumUp POS 3/5, the mean of 6 judges. SumUp POS is an iPad-based till from SumUp Limited, Dublin, regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland, with the cloud TSE included at no charge. how scores are made
As of
Vendor pages captured 29 Oct 2026; evaluated by the panel 30 Oct 2026. all sources

SumUp POS alternatives, European ones first →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Hospitality Operations Manager

Weighted verdict

Runs operations for a group of eight restaurants in three cities with two hundred staff. Wants one menu and price list pushed to every site with local exceptions, staff rights that stop a waiter voiding his own bills, reports that compare sites by the hour, and a works council and data protection officer who can sign off what the till records about employees and loyalty guests, and where it is hosted.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Hospitality Operations Manager

Panel median The Hospitality Operations Manager This judge’s scores over the panel median. Each label opens its reasoning below.
Scores per criterion, in stars out of 5
Criterion Panel median The Hospitality Operations Manager
Checkout, receipts & hardware 3.5 of 5 3 of 5
Card payments & fees 3.5 of 5 3.5 of 5
Fiscal compliance (TSE, DSFinV-K, RKSV) 2 of 5 2 of 5
Inventory, tables, staff & locations 3 of 5 3 of 5
Accounting handoff, DATEV & data export 3 of 5 3 of 5
European sovereignty 1.5 of 5 1 of 5
Pricing transparency 3.5 of 5 3.5 of 5

Checkout, receipts & hardware

How this is scored

How a sale is rung up and what it runs on: a fast till on tablet, phone or dedicated terminal, articles, modifiers and discounts, split bills and tips, receipts printed or sent digitally (QR code, email, a digital Bon), returns and cancellations, a customer display, which hardware is supported or sold (receipt printers, cash drawers, scanners, scales), and whether the till keeps selling when the internet is down.

0 — Not a till; sales cannot be rung up or receipts issued in the product.

3 — Sales rung up on one device with a printed receipt; digital receipts, supported hardware and offline operation are basic or not described.

5 — A till app on named devices (iPad, Android or Windows) with articles, modifiers, discounts and split payments, receipts printed or sent digitally, returns and cancellations, a list of supported printers, drawers and scanners, and an offline mode stated.

8 — Several device types and own or third-party hardware with a published compatibility list, offline mode with its limits stated (how long, which payments, how sync resolves), digital receipts meeting the receipt obligation, customer display, scales and barcode labels supported, and hardware rentable or bought with the terms stated.

10 — A till that never stops a sale: offline operation documented including card payments and fiscal signing, hardware open to standard devices rather than locked to the vendor, receipt layouts that meet the legal minimum content in each named country, and a stated uptime or a status page with incident history.

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The Hospitality Operations Manager

The till is real and named: an iPad-based Pro setup with the printer model (Star Micronics MCP31Ci), cash drawer (ECD330) and barcode scanner listed, a 13-inch till screen beside an 8-inch customer display, articles with variants, modifiers, discounts, split bills, tips, refunds and cancellation receipts, on device types from the Terminal to the Solo readers. Offline payments appear only as a heading in the developer documentation with no stated limits, and we found no public information on digital receipts by email or QR code, on scales, or on renting rather than buying the hardware. 1 5 9 10 12 14

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Card payments & fees

How this is scored

How the till takes card and mobile payments and what that costs: an integrated terminal and the acquirer behind it named, girocard, credit cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay, tap to pay on a phone, the fee per transaction by card type, monthly terminal fees, payout timing, and whether the merchant may use a terminal or acquirer of their own choice instead. A "free" till paid for by card fees counts here.

0 — No card payment of any kind can be recorded at the till.

3 — Card payments recorded at the till, by an integrated terminal or by typing the amount into a separate one; the acquirer, the fees and the choice of terminal are basic or not described.

5 — An integrated card terminal with the payment provider named, girocard, credit cards and mobile wallets accepted, the transaction fee published for the main card types, payouts with their timing stated, and the amount passed to the terminal without retyping.

8 — Fees per card type and terminal cost published, tap to pay on a phone, tips and split payments on the terminal, several integrated acquirers or terminals to choose from (not only the vendor's own), the regulated payment institution named, and card payments reconciled to the daily closing.

10 — Payments without lock-in: the till works with any of several named acquirers on equal terms, fees for every card type, currency and chargeback published, the merchant's contract with the acquirer separable from the POS licence, and a change of acquirer documented without changing the till.

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The Hospitality Operations Manager

Fees are unusually well published — girocard at 0,2 bis 1,39 %, Mastercard and Visa at 0,8 bis 1,19 %, American Express and others at 2 bis 3 %, a flat 1,39 % on the free plan and 0,79 % with Zahlungen Plus from 17 € / Monat, payouts by 7 a.m. the next day — and SumUp itself is the regulated institution behind it under the Central Bank of Ireland. Every path runs through SumUp's own readers and licence, though: we found no public information on attaching a terminal or acquirer of my own choice, and split payments on the device are marked as coming soon. 1 2 6 11 12

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Fiscal compliance (TSE, DSFinV-K, RKSV)

How this is scored

Whether the till survives a cash audit: for Germany a certified technical security device (TSE) with its provider and BSI certificate named, hardware or cloud, the DSFinV-K export for the Kassennachschau and the tax audit, the receipt obligation (Belegausgabepflicht), the Kassenbuch and daily closing (Z-Bericht), GoBD-compliant storage for ten years, and help with the § 146a AO registration; for Austria the RKSV signature and FinanzOnline registration; for other countries their named fiscal rules (NF525, Fiskaltrust and similar).

0 — No fiscal function at all; the product is not a cash register in the legal sense, or states that it does not meet the fiscal rules of the markets it sells into.

3 — The till is called compliant ("finanzamtkonform", "KassenSichV-ready") without naming the TSE, the export formats or the closing; the details are basic or not described.

5 — A TSE included or offered with its provider named (hardware or cloud), the DSFinV-K export available, receipts carrying the TSE signature, a daily closing and cash book, and the receipt obligation met on paper or digitally.

8 — TSE provider and BSI certification named with what happens when the TSE fails, DSFinV-K and the GoBD archive for ten years stated, the § 146a AO registration supported, a procedure documentation (Verfahrensdokumentation) template offered, and the fiscal rules of at least one further country (Austrian RKSV or another) named and met.

10 — Audit-proof across markets: fiscal compliance documented per named country with certificates published, the procedure documentation maintained by the vendor, the fiscal journal exportable after the contract ends, and the vendor's handling of a Kassennachschau (what the auditor gets, from whom, how fast) described.

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The Hospitality Operations Manager

Concretely evidenced: a free cloud TSE and a receipt printer with integrated TSE valid thirty months before module exchange, cash payments stored manipulation-safely, ten-year storage, and the one-month registration to the tax office via the dashboard. For the audit itself we found no public information on the DSFinV-K export, a daily closing or cash book, the TSE provider's BSI certificate, a procedure documentation template, or an Austrian RKSV claim — Austria appears only as an explanation of the law. 3 12 13 14

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Inventory, tables, staff & locations

How this is scored

What the till runs beside the sale: stock and articles with variants, suppliers and purchase orders, recipes or ingredients for hospitality, tables, courses and a kitchen display or kitchen printer, self-order and QR ordering, staff logins with roles and rights, cash differences per employee, reports by product, staff and hour, and several branches or sites managed from one back office.

0 — No articles, stock, staff or reporting beyond the single sale.

3 — An article list and a sales report; stock, staff rights, tables and several locations are basic or not described.

5 — Article and stock management with variants or modifiers, staff logins with roles, reports by product, employee and period, and for hospitality tables and kitchen printing or a kitchen display; several locations or tills under one account.

8 — Stock with suppliers, purchase orders and inventory counts or recipes, a kitchen display and QR or self-order, granular staff rights and a log of cancellations and voids per employee, central articles and prices pushed to several branches, and cross-site reporting.

10 — Multi-site operations run through the product: stock transfers between branches, central menu and price management with local overrides, franchise or group structures, forecasting from sales history, and every change to an article, price or void attributed and exportable.

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The Hospitality Operations Manager

The hospitality basics are there — floor plans, table and parked orders, a kitchen display with real-time updates, kitchen routing and an addable kiosk terminal, plus stock levels, inventory counts and per-employee sales visible to the main account by day, month, quarter or year. For my group it falls short: a cap of ten staff accounts per main account against my two hundred, finer rights only via an email to support, and we found no public information on suppliers, purchase orders, recipes, stock transfers between branches, or a central menu and prices pushed to several sites with local overrides — multi-store management is named as a feature without that detail. 1 2 9 10 12 13 15

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Accounting handoff, DATEV & data export

How this is scored

What reaches the books and what leaves with the merchant: an export to DATEV (DATEV format, DATEV Kassenarchiv online, DATEV Unternehmen online) and to named accounting tools, booking with revenue accounts and tax rates, card payouts and fees reconciled, an API and webhooks, integrations with shop, booking or staff tools, and a complete export of articles, customers, sales and fiscal journals when the contract ends.

0 — No export of any kind; the day's figures have to be retyped.

3 — A CSV or PDF report of sales; booking data, named integrations and a full export are basic or not described.

5 — A DATEV export or another named accounting export with revenue accounts and tax rates, several integrations listed, a documented API, and sales and articles exportable.

8 — DATEV Kassenarchiv online or DATEV Unternehmen online named, card payouts and fees booked separately for reconciliation, a public API with webhooks and a developer portal, integrations with named shop, booking and staff-scheduling tools, and a full export of articles, customers and sales stated.

10 — Nothing stays behind: a complete export of all records including the fiscal journal and receipts in documented formats, access to past data after cancellation for the retention period stated, a migration path from and to other named systems, and the API covering every object the back office shows.

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The Hospitality Operations Manager

A DATEV export is claimed for the iPad till software, Xero, QuickBooks and CSV/PDF exports run automatically from the business account, and the API is genuinely public — SDKs and command-line tools, webhooks, a sandbox, a downloadable OpenAPI specification, payout lists with fees and structured receipt data. We found no public information on DATEV Kassenarchiv online or Unternehmen online, on revenue-account mapping in the export, or on a complete export of articles, customers and fiscal journals after the contract ends. 5 13 17 18

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Who the contracting entity and the parent company are, where sales, customer and employee data are hosted, and who the subprocessors are (hosting, cloud TSE, payment processing, receipt delivery, email, analytics). Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; POS data is financial and fiscal at once, holds staff logins and customer cards, and has to stay readable for the tax office for ten years, so the whole chain counts, not only the database.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated, subprocessors unnamed, and no data processing agreement offered.

3 — A privacy policy and a data processing agreement exist, but hosting location is unstated or non-EU and the subprocessors are not listed.

5 — EU hosting available and an EU contracting entity or EU representative, but parts of the chain (cloud TSE, payment processing, email, analytics, support) run through non-EU providers without a stated safeguard.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, TSE provider and payment institution, subprocessors listed with their locations, a data processing agreement published, and security certifications (ISO 27001, SOC 2) stated.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: European ownership, entity, TSE, payment institution, hosting and every subprocessor, data export and deletion documented, and certifications published with their scope rather than implied.

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The Hospitality Operations Manager

The legal notice gives me a European contracting entity to put in front of the works council — SumUp Limited, Harcourt Centre, Dublin, regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland — and a privacy policy with a notice on the EU data regulation exists. Beyond that the chain is dark: we found no public information on where till, staff and loyalty-guest data are hosted, on the subprocessors behind the cloud TSE, payment processing, receipt delivery or analytics, or on a published data processing agreement. 2 7 8

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the real annual cost from public pages alone: licence per till or per location, which modules (tables, kitchen display, stock, extra tills, DATEV export) cost extra, the TSE and its yearly fee, hardware to buy or rent, card terminal fees and transaction fees, setup and installation, support plans, minimum term and notice period.

0 — No public prices at all; every customer is a sales call or a dealer quote.

3 — A starting price or a free tier exists, but how cost scales with tills, locations, modules or hardware is unclear.

5 — Plans are public with their price per till or location and main inclusions, but at least one commonly needed piece (the TSE, extra tills, hardware, card fees, setup) is unpriced or "on request".

8 — Every plan priced publicly with its scaling rule, the TSE, hardware and add-ons priced, card fees and terminal costs listed, setup and support priced, minimum term and VAT treatment stated.

10 — Complete price computability: annual cost derivable for a given number of tills, locations, modules and card volume, with every add-on, hardware, TSE, setup, support and payment fee and the cancellation and data-return terms published.

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The Hospitality Operations Manager

A single site's bill is largely computable: software at 0 € or Kassensystem Plus at 49 €/Monat, till sets at 399 € to 649 € net, readers at 169 €, 79 €, 34 € and Tap to Pay at 0 €, the TSE included free, VAT treatment and gross prices shown, no long-term contract, monthly billing and a 30-day money-back guarantee. The captured pages give different figures for the overall model — one states one-off costs of 999 € for the hardware package plus a monthly licence fee — and we found no public information on how cost scales per till or per site, on setup fees, or on priced support plans. 1 2 6 11 12 13

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 6 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Hosting location Not determined — uncited Report an error
Hosting options Not determined — uncited Report an error
Open source Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data processing agreement Not determined — uncited Report an error
Transfer impact assessment Not determined — uncited Report an error

Questions about SumUp POS

Is SumUp POS European?

Yes. whats-best.ai classifies SumUp POS as EU-Made.

Where does SumUp POS store data?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 29 Oct 2026.

Does SumUp POS have a free plan?

Yes. SumUp POS has a free plan, per the vendor’s page captured 29 Oct 2026.

What are the best alternatives to SumUp POS?

As of 3 Nov 2026, the panel rates ready2order (3.5/5), Square (3/5) and Gastronovi (3/5) highest among the other 18 POS & Checkout Systems products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is ready2order (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made. The full list, with European products first: SumUp POS alternatives.

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

Sources (18)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage (till) www.sumup.com Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Features page (tablet till) www.sumup.com Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Features page (KassenSichV) www.sumup.com Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Features page (card terminals) www.sumup.com Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 API documentation developer.sumup.com Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Pricing page www.sumup.com Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Legal notice www.sumup.com Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Privacy policy www.sumup.com Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Checkout, receipts & hardware — found from sitemap www.sumup.com Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Checkout, receipts & hardware — found from sitemap www.sumup.com Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Card payments & fees — found from sitemap www.sumup.com Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Card payments & fees — found from sitemap www.sumup.com Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Fiscal compliance (TSE, DSFinV-K, RKSV) — found from sitemap www.sumup.com Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  14. 14 Fiscal compliance (TSE, DSFinV-K, RKSV) — found from sitemap www.sumup.com Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  15. 15 Inventory, tables, staff & locations — found from sitemap www.sumup.com Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  16. 16 Inventory, tables, staff & locations — found from sitemap www.sumup.com Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  17. 17 Accounting handoff, DATEV & data export — found from sitemap www.sumup.com Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  18. 18 Accounting handoff, DATEV & data export — found from sitemap developer.sumup.com Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →