Sunday Alternative: The Best Pay-at-Table Alternatives for Restaurants
The best pay-at-table alternative to Sunday
Sunday lets a guest scan a QR code at the table, look at the bill and pay on their phone, so nobody has to carry a card terminal over. It started in the US and has since expanded into European markets, including the UK.
Restaurants that go looking for a Sunday alternative usually want some mix of these:
- Pay-at-table that connects to the POS they already use
- Something that does more than take a payment, like loyalty and customer data
- A provider with proper support and pricing in the UK and Ireland
- One system for the whole operation, not just the dining room
Flipdish covers all four. The rest of this page explains how, looks at the other options, and lists what to check before you switch.
1. Flipdish - pay-at-table built into the POS
Flipdish runs restaurant payments on the same platform as its POS system, online ordering and marketing tools. Pay-at-table isn't a separate product bolted on the side. It's one more way for an order to get paid.
Sunday solves one problem: the guest pays from their phone. Flipdish solves that one too, but it also handles counter, table, online, kiosk and phone orders in one place, and every payment ends up in a single reporting dashboard.
Here's what happens when a guest pays by QR code through Flipdish:
- The payment is recorded alongside counter and online orders, with nothing to key in
- It shows up in the same reports as everything else, so there's no reconciliation step at close
- Loyalty points are applied if the guest is signed in to their account
- There's no second account to check at month end
That last point is the one finance people tend to care about most. If you run Sunday next to a separate POS, someone has to match the two. With Flipdish there's nothing to match.
What you get:
- QR code pay-at-table connected to Flipdish POS
- Payments from every order channel in one place
- Loyalty and customer data captured at each payment
- Tipping built in
- Support based in the UK and Ireland
- Multi-location management from one account
- Transparent pricing
What a guest sees
The guest scans the code on the table and the bill opens in their phone browser. They check the items, choose to pay all of it or split it, add a tip if they want to, and pay. The table is marked as paid in the POS, and the server doesn't need to do anything.
For the restaurant, the useful part is what happens next. The sale is already in the books, tagged to the table and the shift, and if the guest logged in, to their loyalty account. Nobody types anything in afterwards.
How the other options compare
None of these are bad products. They're just built around something narrower than a full restaurant operation, and that's where they run out of road.
Lightspeed Restaurant
Lightspeed has QR code pay-at-table inside its restaurant POS. It's designed mostly for table service, so counter service, takeaway and multi-channel ordering get less attention, and online ordering and kiosk integration are limited. A restaurant already on Lightspeed gets the feature, but it's tied to that POS. Flipdish gives you the same QR payment plus the channels Lightspeed is thin on.
Dojo Go
Dojo is a payments company first. Its Go product includes QR code payment, and it works with some POS systems, but it isn't a restaurant platform. There's no loyalty, no online ordering integration and little in the way of customer data capture. You get a payment and not much else.
Vita Mojo
Vita Mojo is a UK platform covering digital ordering, POS and payments, aimed at fast-casual and QSR operators. It supports QR code ordering and payment. It's built around counter service more than sit-down dining, and it has fewer multi-location management features than Flipdish.
Sunday
Sunday does QR payment at the table well enough, but it's a standalone tool. It captures a payment and stops there. Loyalty, marketing and a connection to your wider ordering all sit outside it.
Why restaurants move away from Sunday
Reconciliation
When a guest pays through Sunday, that transaction has to be matched against your POS at close. If the two don't talk to each other in real time, that's an extra job after every service.
Take a restaurant doing 60 table covers an evening. That's a reconciliation step every night, seven nights a week, for money that was already collected. When the table payment goes straight into the same system as every other sale, the job disappears.
It isn't only the time. Two systems means two places for a refund, a voided item or a comped dessert to go wrong, and the gap between what Sunday says and what the POS says is usually found on a Monday morning with the weekend's takings in front of you. Nobody enjoys that. One system means one number.
The customer relationship
A guest who pays by QR code and earns loyalty points has a reason to come back. If you capture their email or phone number at payment, you can contact them again. If their order history is saved, you can send offers that match what they actually order.
Sunday captures a payment. Flipdish captures the payment and attaches it to a customer record you can use later. Over a year, that's the difference between a pile of card receipts and a contact list.
Local support
When payments go down at 8pm on a Friday, you need someone to pick up. Support that understands UK and Irish card processing and keeps hours that match restaurant service is worth more than a lower headline price. Ask about it before you sign anything.
What to check before you choose
Ask these of any pay-at-table product, Sunday included.
Does the payment land in your POS reporting in real time, or does it sit in a separate system you have to reconcile by hand?
Can guests earn and redeem loyalty points when they pay by QR code? If they can't, most won't bother signing up.
Does each payment create a customer record you can market to?
Can a table of six split the bill without a member of staff stepping in? For sit-down restaurants this comes up constantly.
Does it prompt for a tip? A screen prompt usually gets better tip rates than a card terminal held out at the end of the table.
What happens if it fails during a busy service, and who do you call?
How the options stack up
| Provider | POS integration | Loyalty | Marketing | Multi-location | UK/Ireland support |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flipdish | Full | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Lightspeed | Lightspeed only | Limited | Limited | ✓ | ✓ |
| Dojo Go | Partial | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vita Mojo | Full | ✓ | Limited | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sunday | Partial | ✗ | ✗ | Limited | Limited |
What pay-at-table does for a restaurant
Faster table turns. The wait between asking for the bill and leaving is mostly dead time. Someone has to find a server, the server has to print the bill, then bring the terminal, then come back. If a guest can pay the moment they're ready, you get that table back sooner. Say you do two sittings a night across 50 covers. Saving five minutes a table adds up over a week.
Less pressure on staff at the busiest point. The end of a meal is when a team is stretched thinnest: printing bills, running terminals, splitting payments three ways. QR payment moves nearly all of that onto the guest's phone.
Better tips. Guests tipping on their own screen, in their own time, tend to tip more than guests with a terminal pushed at them and a queue behind. It's not a guarantee, but it's the usual pattern.
A real customer list. Every payment that captures an email or phone number is someone you can contact again. At 60 covers a night, that's a database in the thousands within a year, built without asking anyone to fill in a form.
Moving from Sunday to Flipdish
Check your Sunday notice period first, so you aren't paying for two systems longer than you need to. Then pick a quiet service to go live, brief the floor team on what guests will see when they scan, and keep a card terminal on hand for the first few nights for anyone who prefers it.
The bigger change is behind the scenes. Once table payments run through Flipdish, they're in the same reports as your counter, online and kiosk sales, and the nightly matching goes away.
If you run more than one site, it matters more. Three restaurants on three different payment setups means three sets of numbers to pull together every week. On one platform, the same report covers all of them.
Try Flipdish
Flipdish works for independent restaurants and multi-site groups alike.