Tipping customs vary across countries – In the United States, it is customary to tip a restaurant server 15-25%, in Brazil, 10%, in Sweden, 5-10%.

The customer may not, however, always feel comfortable parting with cash.

Can both the customer and the waiter ever be happy?

Enter non-cash transactions. 

In 2016, the Federal Bank of Boston found a 409% disparity between cash and non-cash transactions. A study from the Journal of Applied Psychology found that diners tipped an average of 4.3% more just by seeing a credit card logo on the tray that holds their restaurant bill.

Tipping has predominantly remained a cash activity. The current Covid-19 crisis has resulted in fewer people carrying, and less likely to leave or exchange notes or coins, for health or hygiene reasons. The servers in the hospitality industry have borne the brunt, with the shift to more cashless methods of payment squeezing their revenues further. 

Tipping is made much easier with the option of having cards or phones to tap and tip.

In addition to tipping, charities are also heavily reliant on cash. Goodbox has taken on the initiative to combat the problems charities face in a cashless world through contactless technology leading to an uplift of 64% in the donation income of their charity partners. ING has rolled out contactless charity donation boxes, while animal welfare charity Blue Cross has kitted out dogs with coats featuring contactless terminals so that Brits can make donations with a ‘pat and tap‘. 

In 2020, the Royal Canadian Legion partnered with HSBC Canada to pay tribute to the nation’s heroes on tap-enabled readers supporting credit cards or mobile and wearable options like Apple Pay.

Busk in London, a Mayor of London initiative, partnered with Zettle in 2018 to give card readers to performers. The project allowed street musicians across London to accept payments via contactless cards technology in addition to cash and chip cards. Launching the scheme, London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, said it would allow more Londoners to support the capital’s street performers. Charlotte Campbell, a full-time busker in London, said she had seen a significant impact on her earnings after trialing the scheme for two weeks. She has the card reader set up to deduct £2 per tap so fans do not have to select a donation amount. “I believe if street performers like myself don’t adapt to the cashless society we are edging towards, we’re at risk of becoming a dying art,” she said.

To address this emerging trend, YouTransactor provides a complete mPOS technology and software suite, as a foundation for your lightweight terminal project. We also offer the hardware, thereby allowing you to create a sleek, affordable product facilitating fixed amount cashless payments, to make tipping and donations time-efficient and compact.

PS. In the early days, before Justin Bieber became an international pop icon, he often used to busk on the steps of the Avon Theater Stratford.