A salon takes payment in three places: at the reception desk when the client leaves, at the chair or the treatment room, and before the client arrives, when a booking is secured with a deposit. The card machine handles the first two; the third belongs to the booking system. Pricing the two halves separately is the quickest way to see what a salon point of sale really costs.
Card machines for beauty salons: the desk, the chair or both
A countertop terminal at reception suits a salon where every client pays on the way out. A reader that pairs with a phone suits a stylist or therapist who takes payment where the work was done, or works mobile. On the providers' own pages the in-person rates for a UK consumer card run from 1.10% plus 7p at myPOS to 1.75% at Zettle and Square, with SumUp at 1.69% and no monthly fee. A salon card reader is cheap to buy outright: Tide's Nano starts from £11 plus VAT, Zettle's reader from £29 excluding VAT for new business users only, and myPOS prints £39 excluding VAT for its myPOS Go 2.
Salon POS: the diary is the system, the card is the easy part
A salon's day is a booking sheet: stylists, chair time, deposits, no shows and repeat clients. A till that cannot hold that is a till you will run beside a separate diary, entering everything twice. Deposits and card details taken before a visit are not in-person payments, and many providers price keyed-in payments and payment links separately on the same page as the in-person rate. So when comparing salon POS, price the appointment side first, ask how a deposit is taken and at what rate, and treat the payment at the desk as the easier problem, because every provider here can take the card.
Salon point of sale software: what the subscription costs
None of the general POS pages read for this index prints a plan made for salons, so a salon specific price is not published here. The general tiers that are printed give the range: Loyverse at 5 € a month per store for unlimited sales history, SumUp POS Pro from £49 a month, and Epos Now's Android system at £59 a month beside £399 plus VAT for the hardware. A trade specific salon system will usually be quoted, and the card rate always comes on top of the subscription, so compare written quotes on the same specification.
Questions people ask about salon point of sale
What is the cheapest salon card reader?
On printed device prices, Tide's Nano starts from £11 plus VAT and Zettle's reader from £29 excluding VAT for new business users only. On printed rates, Lopay's Essential account prints 0.79% for UK consumer Visa and Mastercard. The cheapest device and the cheapest rate rarely come from the same provider, so price both against your own monthly takings.
Does a salon need POS software or just a card machine?
A card machine takes payment. Salon POS software also holds the diary, the client record and the deposit. A one chair salon with a paper or free online diary can run on a reader alone; a salon with several stylists usually pays for the software to stop entering bookings twice.
Can a salon take a deposit on a card machine?
A deposit taken before the visit is not an in-person payment, so it is usually taken through a payment link or the booking system rather than on the machine at the desk. Providers price those payments separately from the in-person rate, so read the provider's own page for that rate before relying on deposits.
Do card machines for beauty salons need a contract?
Not from the pay-as-you-go providers in this index, which sell the reader outright and charge per transaction with no term. A rented countertop terminal from a traditional acquirer usually comes on a multi-year agreement with a monthly rental, and that price is generally quoted rather than published.