For restaurant and hospitality booking software
You solved the no-show. Your platform can earn on the deposit.
Synapto is the embedded payments partner for UK restaurant booking software. Deposits, card holds and prepaid tasting menus are the reason venues buy booking software at all. The money runs to a gateway they connected themselves, and the bill at the end of the meal goes on a terminal from a third supplier.
How the money moves
The booking and the bill your software already sits between. Each stop is a deposit or a bill your venues take today, through a provider each restaurant chose separately. We move deposits and table payments into your product: each restaurant is settled in full, and your margin is paid monthly.
You own the most valuable moment in the meal.
The deposit is not a payment feature, it is the whole product benefit. A table held with a card is a table that turns up, and a venue that stops losing a Friday night to four empty covers is a venue that renews. Your software owns that moment completely.
What it does not own is any part of what the moment is worth. The deposit clears through whatever gateway the restaurant plugged in, the balance goes on a card machine that arrived from a different sales call, and the venue reconciles two statements that describe the same evening.
The commercials
The deposit and the dinner, on one arrangement.
Most of your venues already take booking deposits and card payments at the table, each through a provider the restaurant chose on its own. We move them onto payments inside your product, in your name and in planned groups of venues, and build the deposit, card machine and payout products that keep them there. Each restaurant is settled in full for every service, and your margin is paid to you monthly.
Small deposits at very high frequency are a real volume once you count a base of venues rather than one restaurant. Add the card machines on the floor and the flow stops being a slice of the evening and becomes the evening. Your platform earns on both, and the venue gets one provider instead of two.
- Your own subscription revenue on agreed terms
- A share of deposits and of the bill at the table
- Card machines supplied, replaced and supported by us
- One settlement across the booking and the floor
- Commercials in writing before you build anything
The rails
Card holds, charges, releases and refunds
A no-show policy only works if the mechanics are right: an authorisation held against the card without taking the money, charged only if the table is missed, released cleanly when the party arrives. Get it wrong and the venue spends its Monday morning apologising.
Prepaid menus and event tickets take payment up front on the same account. On the floor, portable terminals take the bill at the table, and Tap to Pay covers a pop-up or a street food site where a terminal makes no sense.
One point most payments pitches into hospitality skate past. Since October 2024, under the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023, tips and service charge paid by card must reach staff in full, and the card processing fee cannot be taken out of them. So the acceptance cost on the tip line lands on the venue, which makes the rate on that portion a real number rather than a rounding error, and makes a statement that separates the tip from the bill genuinely useful to whoever runs the tronc.
- Card holds and no-show charges handled correctly
- Prepaid menus, deposits and event tickets on one account
- Portable card machines for paying at the table
- Tips and service charge reported separately from the bill
- Tap to Pay for pop-ups and outside service
The weight
Seasonal trading and how risk checks work
December looks nothing like February, and a good Christmas should not read to a payment provider as an anomaly worth freezing. Underwriting happens at onboarding with the venue's real trading pattern understood, so a busy period is expected rather than investigated.
Disputes over a no-show charge come to us, by name. Your support queue stays about software.
- Seasonality accounted for at underwriting, not flagged later
- No-show disputes handled by us, by name
- Merchant boarding and verification ours
- Next day replacement if a terminal fails on service
From first call to first revenue
Book a payments review
Bring your venue count and a rough covers figure. We show you what deposits and the floor are worth, in writing.
Scope the integration
Holds and deposits first, since they are what your product already promises. Terminals follow.
Board your venues
Onboarded by us, outside service hours, with the checks done up front.
Earn on the whole evening
Booking and bill on one revenue line, with a named person looking after both of you.
Questions
No, and pushing them to change mid-season would be a bad idea anyway. New venues can start on our terminals from day one and existing ones move at renewal. If their current terms are genuinely better we will say so.
No. A terminal can run standalone against the same merchant account, so the venue gets one statement without you building anything. Pushing the bill from your system to the terminal is a nice second step, not a prerequisite.
The restaurant. Each venue holds its own merchant agreement and settles to its own bank account. We never hold their money and neither does your platform, which leaves your regulatory position where it is.
Worth a proper conversation rather than a one-line answer, because how tips are captured and distributed has real consequences for the venue's staff and its payroll. We will walk your team through the options and what each means.
A thirty-minute payments review
Bring your venue count and a rough sense of covers. We will tell you what moving your restaurants is worth and whether we are the right fit, including if we are not.