Most card machine providers charge you to connect your till. Teya connects to 50+ ePOS systems at zero cost. Here is what that means for your business.
There is a cost hiding in plain sight inside many UK businesses. It does not appear on your rates sheet. It does not show up in your monthly statement. But it is real, and for a busy hospitality or retail operation, it can run into hundreds of pounds a year before you even notice it.
It is the cost of connecting your card machine to your till.
For something that should be a basic feature of modern payment infrastructure, ePOS integration has somehow become a revenue stream for some of the UK's largest payment processors. You pay for the hardware. You pay the transaction fees. And then, if you want your terminal to actually talk to your till system, you pay for that too.
Teya's approach is different. Over 50 till systems connect to Teya's card machines at no additional cost. No integration fees. No monthly platform charge. No setup invoice. This article explains exactly how that works, what connection methods are available, and how it compares honestly against what the major UK providers offer.
If you run a café, a restaurant, a boutique, or any business that takes more than a handful of payments a day, your point-of-sale system is the operational heart of your business. It manages your menu or product catalogue, tracks stock, generates end-of-day reports, and records every transaction.
Your card machine is the financial instrument that completes those transactions.
When these two systems do not communicate, everything gets slower and more error-prone. Your staff keys the amount into the card machine manually, which introduces errors. Receipts do not reconcile cleanly with your till records. You run two end-of-day reports and spend time making them agree. Refunds become a manual process. Split bills become a negotiation.
When they do communicate, the opposite happens. The till sends the amount directly to the terminal. The customer taps or inserts. The payment confirmation flows back to the till. One transaction, one record, no human error in the middle.
For a busy Saturday lunch service, that few seconds saved per transaction multiplies across hundreds of covers. For your accountant at month end, the clean data is worth real time and money. For your staff, it removes a source of daily friction and occasional costly mistakes.
Integration is not a luxury feature. It is basic operational hygiene. The question is why you should pay extra for it.
Teya offers two technical methods for connecting a card machine to a till system, and the right one depends on your setup.
POSLink is Teya's cloud-based integration protocol. Your ePOS system sends a payment instruction over the internet to Teya's platform, which forwards it to the card terminal. When the payment completes, the confirmation travels back the same way.
The practical advantage of POSLink is flexibility. Because the communication travels via the cloud rather than a direct cable or local network pairing, the till and the terminal do not need to be physically adjacent or on the same local network. This suits larger venues with multiple stations, businesses with terminals in different areas of the floor, or any setup where physical proximity between devices is inconvenient.
POSLink is compatible with the majority of Teya's ePOS partners.
The second method is app-to-app integration, which runs on Teya's Android-based terminals. Here, the ePOS software and the payment application run on the same device or communicate directly between Android applications. There is no cloud relay in the middle, which means the connection is fast, works offline, and eliminates any latency from internet dependency.
This method suits businesses that want simplicity of hardware. One device, two applications, seamless handoff between them.
Across both methods, Teya's integration directory spans over 50 systems. These include names that will be immediately familiar to UK operators:
The full list extends well beyond these names into sector-specific systems for beauty, fitness, fashion retail, and more.
The integration cost for all of them: nothing.
Fairness requires acknowledging that the competitor landscape on ePOS integration is not uniform. Some providers have invested meaningfully in this area. Others have not. Here is an honest assessment.
Worldpay is the UK's largest payment processor by volume, handling a significant share of the country's card transactions. Its integration capability is genuine and reasonably extensive. However, Worldpay has historically structured ePOS integration as a commercial arrangement rather than a standard inclusion. Depending on your contract and which till system you use, you may encounter additional monthly fees or a minimum spend requirement to access integrated payments.
Worldpay is also primarily targeting mid-market and enterprise merchants. If you are a small independent business, you may find their commercial terms reflect that focus, with pricing that assumes a higher transaction volume to justify the relationship.
Dojo has grown quickly in the UK market and has built a reputation for its next-day settlement and slick hardware. Its ePOS integration list is more limited than Teya's, with a narrower selection of partner systems. Dojo's focus has historically been on the payment experience itself rather than deep till connectivity, and while the company continues to expand its integrations, the breadth of Teya's 50-plus partner list is a meaningful practical advantage if your till system sits outside Dojo's current supported range.
Dojo does not widely publish integration fees, but the constraints of the partner list are the more significant limiting factor for many merchants.
SumUp is a genuinely good product for micro-merchants, sole traders, and businesses taking occasional payments. Its card readers are affordable, its app is intuitive, and it has improved considerably over the years. However, SumUp's ePOS integration capability remains limited. The platform is designed around its own Point of Sale application rather than as a hub connecting to third-party till systems.
If you are a market trader, a mobile therapist, or someone selling at events, SumUp is well worth considering. If you run a restaurant with a kitchen management system, a retail operation with complex inventory, or any business that has invested in a specific ePOS platform, SumUp's integration constraints will become apparent quickly.
Square occupies an interesting position. Its own ecosystem is genuinely impressive. Square for Restaurants, Square for Retail, and Square Appointments are polished products that handle a lot of what a small business needs. If you are willing to operate entirely within Square's world, the integration problem largely disappears because everything is Square.
The challenge arises when you have already invested in a third-party till system, or when your sector uses a specialist platform that Square does not replicate. Square's openness to integrating with external ePOS systems is limited. The product strategy is to bring you inside the Square ecosystem, not to connect to the ecosystem you already have.
For a new business starting from scratch, this can be perfectly viable. For an established business with existing till infrastructure, it often means choosing between rebuilding your operational stack around Square or accepting that your terminal and till will not talk to each other.
Consider a mid-sized independent restaurant in Manchester. It uses Lightspeed as its ePOS system, processes around 400 covers on a busy weekend, and takes an average transaction value of £28.
With a disconnected card machine, the process for each table is: server takes order on Lightspeed, prints or memorises the total, manually keys it into the card machine, takes payment, and then reconciles the two records at end of service. On a 400-cover Saturday, assuming each manual keying step adds just 15 seconds, that is 100 minutes of accumulated time in a single service. It also introduces the risk of keying errors, which create reconciliation headaches and occasionally result in taking the wrong amount from a customer.
With Teya's integration to Lightspeed via POSLink, the till sends the amount to the terminal automatically. Staff take the terminal to the table, the customer pays, and the confirmation returns to Lightspeed without anyone typing a number. That 100 minutes disappears. Reconciliation at the end of the night is clean.
Now consider the cost comparison. If that restaurant paid a competitor an integration fee of £20 to £30 per month for the same connectivity, it would spend £240 to £360 per year for a problem that Teya solves at no additional charge. That is before accounting for the staff time saved, the errors avoided, and the smoother customer experience.
Worldpay has integration capability but targets it at larger merchants with pricing to match. Dojo has momentum but a narrower partner list. SumUp is excellent for simple setups but not built for complex till connectivity. Square is integrated brilliantly within its own ecosystem but pulls you away from the external platforms you may already rely on.
Teya's position is distinct. A partner network of over 50 till systems, two flexible connection methods covering both cloud and Android app-to-app architectures, and no integration charge sitting on top of your existing fees.
For a UK SME that has already chosen its till system, or that is evaluating card machines without wanting to rebuild its entire operational stack, this is a straightforward commercial advantage. The integration question, which for some providers is a negotiation or an added line on the invoice, simply does not arise.
Check the list before you commit. Before signing with any payment provider, ask specifically whether your till system is on their supported integration list. Ask whether there is any fee, monthly or otherwise, for that integration. Get the answer in writing.
Understand which method suits your setup. If your terminals and till stations are fixed and co-located, app-to-app may offer the simplest path. If you need flexibility across a larger floor or multiple devices, POSLink's cloud architecture is worth understanding.
Quantify the value of clean data. The time your team spends reconciling disconnected systems is a real cost. Calculate it. Even a conservative estimate will likely surprise you.
Factor integration into your total cost of payment. The headline transaction rate is only part of the picture. Monthly fees, integration charges, and hardware costs all feed into what you actually pay. An honest comparison requires looking at all of them together.
If your till system is on Teya's partner list, the conversation about integration cost is a short one. It costs nothing. What it saves you is considerably more interesting.
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Disclaimer
The views and information shared in this post are for educational and informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, legal, or professional advice. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, Klipy UK Limited accepts no liability for decisions made based on this content. Payment processing rates, regulations, and product features referenced are subject to change. Klipy UK is an authorised seller of Teya payment solutions. Where third-party sources are cited, links are provided for reference; Klipy UK does not endorse or guarantee the accuracy of external content. For personalised guidance on your business payment needs, please contact us directly at editor@klipy.uk.
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This content is published by Klipy UK, a Teya-authorised reseller of payment solutions. The views expressed are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial advice. All content is the intellectual property of Klipy UK. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
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