SaaS platforms providing services for scheduling, inventory management, and kitchen ticketing often expand to offer online payments. But for businesses like restaurants, auto shops, and health and wellness spas, many payments still happen in person. If a platform does not offer in-person payment capabilities, that payment volume—and a key part of the merchant relationship—goes to another provider.

When online and in-person payments run through separate providers, merchants must manage another system, vendor, and support relationship. By offering in-person payments, platforms can capture more payment volume, create a new revenue stream, and give merchants one place to manage their businesses.

Dines, an all-in-one platform for UK hospitality businesses, increased revenue by 150% per venue after adding an in-person payment offering. Mindbody’s seamless online, in-app, and in-person payment experience helps drive revenue for thousands of wellness practices. SiteMinder enables hoteliers around the world to manage bookings, distribution, and guest payments, including room charges and incidentals at check-in.

This guide explains the key considerations for adding in-person payments, how build and buy approaches compare, and how Stripe Terminal can help platforms launch faster.

Key considerations for adding in-person payments

Offering in-person payments on your platform requires more than an integration with existing point-of-sale (POS) solutions. You also need to select hardware, manage logistics, configure devices and software, and provide ongoing monitoring and maintenance. Here’s what to consider when adding in-person payments.

Choosing the right hardware

Your merchants need to accept payments wherever business happens, whether that’s at a market stall, checkout counter, salon chair, or job site. That means selecting the right device for each environment, including countertop readers, handheld devices, unattended kiosks, or mobile phones. When choosing hardware, consider:

• Device compatibility: If you build a custom POS app to run on devices, you’ll want to evaluate compatibility alongside screen size and resolution.
  
• Location: Decide whether you’ll need weatherized or unattended devices for businesses that take payments in outdoor environments like parking lots, or devices with PIN pads to meet requirements in certain markets.
  
• Branding: Decide whether you’ll need to customize the physical hardware to represent your brand for marketing purposes.
  
• Mobility: For businesses on the go or that need to accept in-person payments immediately, offering Tap to Pay on iPhone or Android lets merchants start taking payments without additional hardware.
  

Managing ordering and logistics

Hardware selection and logistics are the platform’s responsibility. Getting devices into merchants’ hands requires warehousing, inventory management, and order fulfillment, which can be a heavy lift for lean operations. And if you serve businesses in multiple countries, you’ll also need to navigate import and export regulations for cross-border shipments.

Configuring and deploying payment devices

Getting a device live requires guiding businesses through unboxing, network connectivity, and authentication. Choose providers and configure devices based on the payment features required in the markets and industries you serve. That might include local payment methods, dynamic currency conversion, tipping, and buy now, pay later (BNPL) for high-ticket purchases.

Maintaining business continuity

A Wi-Fi outage can take a connected POS offline, while a power outage can disable wired devices without battery backup. Devices with backup options, such as cellular connectivity, long battery life, and offline payment fallback, can help merchants continue taking payments when their primary connection fails. Pair these safeguards with clear support, remote diagnostics, and replacement processes to minimize disruption.

How to offer in-person payments: Build vs. buy

There are two main approaches for offering in-person payments: building and buying. The right one depends on your platform’s goals. Building your own stack can offer the most control and customization but often requires continuous maintenance. Buying a unified payments solution connects online and in-person payments in one place and provides a foundation to scale your payments business.

Build: Develop your own in-person payments stack

Many SaaS platforms already embed payments into their software to help their merchants accept online payments. Building a complete in-person payments offering means owning more of the stack: payment devices, middleware, gateway connections, processing, certifications, and device fulfillment.

Build your own stack when:

• Your platform serves a regulated or highly specialized industry, such as public sector or government organizations, where you have unique requirements or domain expertise.
  
• You need a custom device and want direct control over hardware specifications, certifications, and the user experience.
  
• In-person payments are a substantial part of your business, and you have a dedicated team to manage hardware, manufacturer relationships, security, certifications, logistics, and ongoing operations.
  

This approach offers the most control, but it also requires a long-term investment. Expanding to new markets can mean replicating certifications and connections, adapting to local payment methods and hardware requirements, and managing import and export logistics.

Buy: Partner with a unified payments provider

A unified payments platform brings online and in-person payments together in a single, customizable integration. It’s one place for platforms to manage payment acceptance, merchant onboarding, payment data, and hardware fulfillment.

Partner with a unified payments platform when:

• You want to give merchants one streamlined path to activate and manage payments across their business.
  
• You don't have a dedicated team to manage the hardware, security, certifications, and logistics operations supporting in-person payments.
  
• You expect to add new payment methods, commerce surfaces, or markets over time.
  

This approach is best for platforms that want to integrate payments into their revenue strategy. Platforms can customize and scale their payments offering without maintaining separate systems for online and in-person transactions, creating a more cohesive experience for merchants and reducing operational complexity for their teams. This approach also gives merchants a single view of payment activity for reconciliation, reporting, and customer engagement.

How Stripe Terminal helps platforms offer in-person payments

Stripe Terminal brings online and in-person payments together through a single integration. Platforms can offer merchants the hardware and payment methods that fit their business while using Stripe to manage ordering, fulfillment, deployment, device management, and expansion into new markets.

Give merchants flexibility in accepting payments

Platforms often serve merchants with different operating environments. Stripe offers a broad portfolio of both Stripe-designed and third-party devices, so platforms can pair the right hardware and payment experience for their business.

Dripos, a platform for restaurants, wanted to help merchants use their point-of-sale system wherever they serve customers. “Stripe Reader S700 lets our users serve their customers wherever they want—it’s a complete register unit, but on the go,” said Avery Durrant, cofounder and former co-CEO, Dripos. “If there’s a lunch rush, they can fulfill orders tableside, or if they want to experiment with things like pop-ups, they can easily take their entire POS system with them.”

WooCommerce wanted to make it easier for new merchants to begin accepting in-person payments. By adding Tap to Pay to the Woo app, WooCommerce lets merchants download the app, create an account, and begin accepting payments from any compatible iPhone or Android device, without having to wait for hardware.

Simplify hardware ordering and fulfillment

Getting hardware to merchants requires sourcing, warehousing, ordering, and fulfillment—work that many software platforms are not set up to manage. Stripe Terminal handles these logistics while letting platforms choose devices for merchants or offer hardware ordering within their product. With Terminal, you can choose:

• Direct fulfillment, which ships a chosen device to merchants when they are onboarded.
  
• Embedded ordering (in private preview), which adds hardware ordering directly into the platform.
  

Stripe offers two paths to embed ordering into your platform: the Terminal Hardware Orders API and our embedded component.

Mindbody’s device purchase workflow originally required staff to process each order manually and arrange shipping to the merchant. The company streamlined the process by embedding device ordering in its platform, saving staff two hours per order.

Phorest, an Ireland-based SaaS platform for salons and spas, wanted to offer devices without building its own distribution operation. By integrating hardware ordering and direct-ship fulfillment into its platform, Phorest deployed 1,000 card readers to salons in six weeks without handling inventory itself.

Deploy devices faster

Preconfigured devices help merchants connect to the platform and begin accepting payments sooner. In the Stripe Dashboard, platforms can assign devices to locations and preconfigure each so they are ready to go live when the customer gets them.

MyKaarma, a platform for US auto dealerships, previously needed on-site IT support to set up payment hardware at each new location. The platform now ships preconfigured devices so dealerships can connect to Wi-Fi and accept payments out of the box, accelerating rollout for dealership groups with dozens or hundreds of locations.

With Apps on Devices, platforms can remotely deploy their custom point-of-sale app to compatible smartPOS devices and customize the on-device experience with splash screens. Global movie platform INDY by Fandango adopted Apps on Devices to allow servers to take and modify orders without going back to a fixed POS device. “When Apps on Devices launched … we had our dine-in ordering system running on Stripe handhelds in no time," said Ian Brown, cofounder of INDY.”

Monitor and update a growing device fleet centrally

The Dashboard gives platforms a centralized view of their hardware fleet, including each device’s online status, Wi-Fi connection, and battery health, helping teams identify and troubleshoot issues before they disrupt payments. Platforms can schedule software updates and patches remotely during off-hours, keeping devices current without interrupting transactions or asking merchants to update devices themselves.

Stripe can also help platforms prepare their IT operations, service teams, and merchant partners to diagnose and resolve common issues remotely, reducing the need for costly on-site support. For devices that need to be returned within the first 30 days, teams can submit and track returns directly in the Dashboard in most markets.

Using Terminal, US-based event ticketing platform TixTrack has one place to monitor and report on its payment hardware across venues, including some of the world’s largest theaters, museums, and attractions. “Being able to have a single place to track all the hardware, monitor hardware provision, and connect its use to online sales is hugely valuable as we expand,” said Steven Sunshine, former TixTrack CEO.

Why platforms choose Stripe Terminal

More ways for merchants to accept payments

Shopmonkey, a platform for auto repair businesses, found that asking customers to pay at a fixed device at the front desk added friction at the end of a service. By adding handheld readers, technicians could accept payment next to the vehicle. With Stripe, more than 45% of Shopmonkey’s total payment volume is now completed vehicle-side. “We really love the flexibility to meet customers out in the parking lot, complete the purchase, and have all the transactions feed directly into one interface on Shopmonkey,” said Ishai Crane, senior product marketing manager at Shopmonkey.

Reliability in temporary, high-traffic environments

AtVenu, a platform for merchandise sales at live events, previously used multiple payment providers. Its point-of-sale provider’s systems and hardware weren’t designed for vendors operating in temporary, high-traffic environments with unstable Wi-Fi. When those systems failed, atVenu engineers had to troubleshoot issues themselves. Terminal can meet the conditions and scope of atVenu’s business: “In one night we’ll process over $10 million of volume through Stripe without a hiccup,” said Derek Ball, atVenu’s cofounder and former CEO.

A connected payments experience across thousands of locations

Aesthetic Record, a platform for medical spas and aesthetic practices, originally offered individual payments capabilities that clinics could adopt separately. Many also used third-party payment providers and local banks, which limited their use of Aesthetic Record's payments products and added complexity. Aesthetic Record used Stripe to launch a unified financial suite directly within its platform. In its first year, 60% of its 6,000 clinics adopted the new payments offering. In-person payments now account for 44% of its total payment volume.

99.999% uptime for allO’s in-person payments

Munich-based restaurant management platform allO sought a more reliable in-person payments experience after previous card readers routinely failed to accept payments. AllO reports that Stripe Reader S700 devices achieve 99.999% uptime, which is critical in Germany where businesses often have to switch to cash-only payments when card networks go down. “A few months ago, major German supermarkets couldn’t take card payments for two days in a row, but our customers could,” said Cancan Liu, cofounder and CEO of allO.

Less time reconciling online and in-person sales

Shopcada, a Singapore-based commerce platform, uses Stripe Connect to embed online payments in its platform and Stripe Terminal for in-person payments. Terminal reduces manual checkout steps at retail stores and simplifies reconciliation across online and in-person sales. “Not having to aggregate data from multiple platforms is the biggest saving for businesses,” says Clara Goh, head of operations and cofounder of Shopcada. “They can check stock levels across multiple channels and distribute and replenish more effectively.”

How Stripe can help

More than 18,000 platforms around the world use Stripe to offer financial products and services to their merchants. With Stripe, platforms can onboard merchants, accept and move money, unify online and in-person payments, and bring new payments capabilities to market.

• Stripe Terminal gives platforms one integration for the hardware, software, and payments infrastructure needed to accept online and in-person payments.
  
• Stripe Connect helps platforms onboard merchants, accept payments, move money, and monetize financial services within their product.
  
• Stripe Partner Ecosystem provides enablement resources, growth advisory, co-marketing campaigns, and co-selling support to help platforms develop their go-to-market strategy and drive merchant activation of payment devices and in-person checkout.