Square
squareup.com
In 2024: Announced Square Kiosk, a fully integrated solution – with hardware, software, and payments – that allows guests to easily order and pay while freeing up staff to do other tasks. Designed with fast-moving and fast-growing restaurants in mind, Square Kiosk empowers guests to customize and place orders through its sleek and intuitive design, an easy-to-use interface, and embedded contactless and chip payment technology. Amid growing labor costs, too, Square Kiosk gives operators the ability to staff up other areas of their businesses while still taking orders.
Introduced new features like Bar Tabs, allowing bar and brewery sellers to streamline service and start tabs without holding onto guests’ cards while still protecting their bottomlines, and Instant Payouts, a way for sellers using Square Checking to smooth their cashflow by instantly accessing their earnings from third-party delivery providers.
Innovative features: Square has always been committed to building innovative solutions to help businesses succeed. From its original Square reader that empowered small businesses to take payments, to introducing AI-powered tools to help sellers streamline their operations. Square allows food and beverage businesses to manage their daily operations with consistency and care, adapt easily with flexible tools as restaurants evolve, and propel businesses to the next stage of growth.
Tabit’s Tabit rOS, TabitPAD
tabit.cloud
In 2024: Focused on empowering multi-location restaurant operators with smarter, more scalable POS tools and technology tools. Enhanced its enterprise management capabilities—making it easier to standardize and control Item Catalogs, Pricing, and System Configurations across multiple locations, even with complex operational needs. To give operators maximum flexibility, Tabit expanded its integrations across the restaurant tech ecosystem and made its OpenAPI more accessible, so operators can seamlessly connect with best-in-class solutions. On the kitchen side, Tabit leveled up its native Kitchen Display System (KDS) with new features like Load Balancing, Kitchen Zones, and real-time Performance Reporting to keep back-of-house operations fast, efficient, and in sync.
Innovative features: Tabit is reimagining the POS experience to fit the needs of today’s fast-paced, multi-channel restaurant businesses. Itsr 360-degree solution is designed for frictionless deployment and management, for single locations or a national chain. At the core is Tabit’s MobileFirst POS, built with a payments-agnostic approach to give operators true flexibility. Guests can order and pay however they prefer—tableside, at the counter, on a kiosk, or online—while operaotrs stay in full control of the experience across all touchpoints.
In 2025: Tabit is building on momentum with innovations designed to deepen guest engagement and optimize operations. Tabit is expanding its Loyalty platform, including the launch of a branded, white-label consumer app that keeps guests connected to the brand. Integrating AI-powered insights and assistance tools into its suite—giving operators actionable data in real time, and enhancing the guest experience through personalized interactions. Plus, Tabit is continuing to broaden its integrations to support a true best-of-breed solution approach.
Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions’s ELERA Point of Sale
commerce.toshiba.com
In 2024: Toshiba has advanced its POS software with ELERA Self Service, a next-generation self-checkout solution built on ELERA microservices architecture. Leveraging advanced AI, IoT, and computer vision, it delivers intuitive, efficient, and secure transactions. Its flexible, modular design supports multiple payment options—including card, contactless, and biometric authentication—enhancing convenience and security. Optimized for hospitality, ELERA Self Service is deployed in stadiums and arenas for fast, frictionless checkout for food and merchandise, reduce wait times, and improve operations.
Innovative features: With elective promotion redemptions, businesses can personalize customer rewards and drive repeat visits. Spanish translations enhance the system’s accessibility for international use. The new split tender functionality supports multiple payment methods catering to evolving customer payment preferences. eReceipts reduce paper waste while maintaining seamless digital transactions. Toshiba integrated Chase payments. Android 14 mobile support also ensures seamless POS operations, from terminals to mobile devices. The ELERA Commerce Platform delivers a modular, cloud-native architecture that enables businesses to scale, adapt, and innovate at their own pace without costly rip-and-replace upgrades.
By integrating AI, edge computing, and IoT, ELERA allows retailers to harness real-time data for predictive insights, optimizing operations and enhancing the customer experience. From dynamic pricing to personalized recommendations, ELERA’s intelligent capabilities eliminate friction, anticipate shopper needs, and reach customers on their terms.
In 2025: Toshiba continues to redefine POS innovation by pushing intelligence to the edge with AI, IoT, and microservices.
TRAY
tray.com
In 2024: TRAY made significant strides in enhancing its POS software to meet the evolving needs of restaurant operators and franchise groups. Introduced a modernized Payment UI for more flexible transactions and real-time out of stock capabilities for faster menu management. Introduced significant enhancements to enterprise capabilities and their performance, including enterprise menu, tax, device and employee management. Key integrations across loyalty programs, third-party ordering platforms, as well as labor and staff support integrations, enable clients to customize their TRAY experience to meet all of their restaurant needs within one platform. Introduced industry leading offline capabilities, allowing users to continue uninterrupted in-site operations and credit card transactions, even when networks are disrupted. Enhanced its dynamic multi-language capabilities, which has fast-tracked global expansion for restaurants outside of the U.S. Optimization was a major focus for 2024 to ensure that Tray is building future-proofing enhancements that will allow its software to more seamlessly operate on the latest versions of Android. Many POS Systems in the market today are still running on older, unoptimized versions of Android (i.e. Android Versions 7-11). Tray has prioritized the work to ensure that its code supports all current and future Android versions, as well as newer libraries and modern tools that will ensure our platform is always operating with leading technology.
Innovative features:TRAY’s POS software stands out for its hardware-agnostic design, ensuring compatibility across multiple devices while maintaining exceptional user experience. Enterprise-level features like item-level routing, enterprise menu management, and advanced taxation management. Its AI-driven workflows and visual dashboards provide operators with actionable insights. Integrations with HRIS and payroll systems simplify labor management, while customer data-driven initiatives enable personalized experiences. Supports automatic offline capabilities, allowing for sites to enjoy uninterrupted in-store operations and credit card payments even when network connectivity is disrupted. TRAY’s webhook framework and comprehensive API/SDK documentation facilitate seamless third-party integrations.
In 2025: TRAY is focused on enabling richer in-kitchen capabilities such as bulk preparation and item-level routing, recipe integration, and visual controls for kitchen operations. Enhancing webhooks and API rate limiting to improve developer experiences and support seamless integrations. Its new HQ prototype will deliver a visually refreshed interface with enhanced dashboards and workflow improvements. Additionally, TRAY is exploring voice ordering and AI assistant integration to streamline ordering processes and improve operational efficiency.
