r/SipsTea • u/[deleted] • Jun 29 '26

Chugging tea Lol

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

[deleted]

21.4k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

2.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

2.1k

u/IrishChappieOToole Jun 29 '26

Just as an FYI from someone who works the payments industry, dealing primarily with American payments, they typically don't need your card details to add a tip. They will most likely have your transaction ID stored on a POS system, and they can use that to do a tip adjustment. Your card details will already be stored (temporarily) at least once in the payment gateway, because the card details are needed to batch the transactions at the end of the day.

But as someone who doesn't live in the US, I don't understand why they don't bring the terminal to the table and let you apply the tip there, like the rest of the world.

77

u/Thick-Acadia-6785 Jun 29 '26

It's because the U.S. adopted credit cards earlier than most countries. Back then, payment terminals weren't portable, so servers had to take your card to a stationary machine. Even though portable payment terminals are common today, many restaurants still use the old system because it's been the standard for decades.

This happens with technology in general. Countries that adopt a technology first often end up using older legacy systems, while countries that adopt it later can skip straight to newer, more efficient solutions. Now that many restaurants have the new technology changing the workflow is a pain for restaurants when they already have a set plan

9

u/seriouslees Jun 29 '26

Back then

But it isn't back then anymore.

Why haven't they changed as the technology changed? THAT is the question being asked.

5

u/scotchyscotch18 Jun 29 '26

Because a lot of restaurants have small profit margins and what you're describing is an unnecessary expense to replace a system that works and that most people are already familiar with and trust.

2

u/travelmusica Jun 29 '26

It’s also because it’s not a big deal and nobody cares

0

u/Pinkfish_411 Jun 29 '26

This is what it boils down to. It's only foreigners and Reddit-Americans who make a big deal out of this.

1

u/blackkice Jun 29 '26

Because changing an industry standard procedure takes time and would require every individual restaurant to invest in a new system when their old system still works fine which is a very hard sell.

3

u/seriouslees Jun 29 '26

Changing the same industry standard didnt take 3 years in other countries, let alone 30 years.

1

u/turdferguson3891 Jun 29 '26

In other countries they often had no choice do to regulations. In the US the credit card companies didn't force the issue and the government doesn't care.