Restaurant POS and credit card processing in Tampa Bay

Tampa Bay restaurants run hard: patios and waterfront decks, game-day rushes, and groups that grow from one location to four. Celt Payments installs Lavu POS with a cash discount program built to give back the money most restaurants hand over in card processing and per-transaction fees.

Built for patios, decks and busy floors

The Adyen S1F2 handheld takes tap, chip, swipe and phone wallets and prints the receipt at the table. The card never leaves the guest's hand, tips are prompted on screen, and nobody walks to the counter twice. If you want to see what that looks like in this market, Lavu published a short video with O'Maddy's Grille in Gulfport, a high-volume waterfront restaurant in Pinellas County that switched from Toast. It's on our homepage.

For groups with more than one location

Tampa Bay has plenty of operators running three, five or ten locations. That is where Marty AI earns its keep. Marty reads across your POS, payroll and scheduling overnight and sends a plain-English Morning Deposit by 6 AM: overtime building up, undocumented comps, and productivity gaps between sister locations that no single report shows side by side. Setup takes about 90 minutes, with no new hardware.

What your statement is really costing you

Most restaurants pay a blended rate of roughly 2.6% to 2.9% of card volume, plus $0.10 to $0.25 on every transaction. At $50,000 a month in card sales that is around $17,000 a year. With our discount program your menu price is your card price, customers paying cash or debit receive a discount, and there is no separate per-transaction fee on your statement.

The handhelds we install for Tampa Bay restaurants

Two ways to take payment at the table, both on Adyen processing. Pick one, or run both on the same floor.

The S1F2 shows credit, debit and cash as three separate buttons, and we set the display and receipt wording to the card network and state rules that apply to you. Amounts on the terminal screen are illustrative. You can also prove it on one station for sixty days on the S1F2 before changing anything else.

Is a cash discount program legal in Florida?

Florida's former statutory ban on credit card surcharging has been held unconstitutional, and cash discount programs are widely used by Florida restaurants. Our program is structured as a discount from one posted price, so nobody pays more than the menu price, and we configure the terminal display and receipt wording to current card network rules. Confirm your specific setup with your acquirer or your own advisor. The full answer is in our FAQ.

Related reading

• The FTC and eight states, including Florida, sued Toast over hidden fees and hard-to-cancel contracts
• An appeals court struck down the Fed's 21 cent debit fee cap. What it means for US restaurants
• Lavu POS with Adyen processing, from Celt Payments
• Cash discount program vs dual pricing vs surcharging
• Toast's take rate rose again
• How to find your real effective processing rate in ten minutes