Restaurant POS Systems in Toronto: What Independents Pay

Most Toronto independents land on one of six systems: Square, TouchBistro, Lightspeed, Toast, Clover or Moneris. Since Ontario charges a single 13% HST, every one of them handles your tax fine. So the choice comes down to three things: what you pay to process cards, how long the contract holds you, and who picks up when the terminal freezes at 7:40 on a Saturday.

That last one got more interesting this summer. In July, one owner posted on r/restaurantowners that "two different sales people from Toast" had called, "a third emailed me and a fourth reached out via LinkedIn," all with the same news: TouchBistro had been sold. The Toronto POS market is local, crowded and, right now, moving. Here's what a 40-seat independent actually needs to know.

Which POS systems do Toronto restaurants actually use?

Search "restaurant POS systems Toronto" and the map pack fills up with local dealers, the ads are processors offering free months, and Kijiji has a page of used terminals. What you won't find is a straight answer on price. So here it is, using what each company publishes for Canada as of September 2026.

System	Owner / HQ	Published entry price (CAD/mo)	Published in-person credit rate	Hardware
Square for Restaurants	Block, San Francisco	$0 (Free) or $60 per location (Plus), +$40 per extra countertop device	2.5%	Any iPad or Android, Square readers
TouchBistro	Harris (Constellation Software), Toronto	Lists from $89 (POS) and $99 (Essentials bundle) without naming a currency; add-ons by quote	Not published; several processor options	iPad only
Lightspeed Restaurant	Lightspeed, Montreal	$89 (Starter), $239 (Essential), $499 (Premium)	2.6% + 10¢	iPad, plus Lightspeed payment terminals
Toast	Toast, Boston (Toronto office)	Canadian pricing by quote	Not published for Canada	Toast proprietary hardware
Clover	Fiserv, sold through TD and other resellers	Depends on the reseller	Depends on the reseller	Clover proprietary hardware
Moneris Go Restaurant	Moneris, Toronto	From $30, KDS add-on $9	Depends on your Moneris agreement	Moneris Go terminals

Sources: Square for Restaurants pricing, TouchBistro pricing, Lightspeed Restaurant pricing, Moneris Go Restaurant launch.

Look at the right-hand columns. Half the list won't show you a Canadian processing rate until you're on a call with sales. That's normal in this category, and it's also the single most useful thing to know walking in: the number that decides your bill is the one you have to ask for.

A few notes the table can't hold:

• Square is the only one where you can sign up tonight, month-to-month, and know your exact rate. Interac debit runs 0.75% + 7¢ per transaction. The Free plan has no monthly fee, but Plus is where full-service features like coursing live.
• TouchBistro is the Toronto-born dine-in specialist, built around floor plans, coursing and split bills on iPad. Its add-ons (online ordering, reservations, loyalty, KDS) are now quote-only, so budget from a real Canadian quote, not the $89 on the pricing page.
• Lightspeed has a clear published ladder, but the Starter-to-Essential jump is $150 a month and KDS screens are $40 each on every plan.
• Toast runs Canadian sales out of an office at University and Dundas and has built a Toronto customer base. Its US page lists a $0 Starter and a US$69 Core plan; in Canada, you'll get a quote.
• Clover is one piece of hardware sold by many companies. Since TD started offering Clover to its merchants after Fiserv took over part of TD's merchant business, a lot of Toronto owners get pitched Clover by their bank. Two restaurants on identical Clover setups can pay very different rates depending on who sold it.
• Moneris Go Restaurant launched in October 2025 for cafés, bakeries and counter service, from $30 a month. For table service, Moneris points restaurants to its TouchBistro partnership, which adds pay-at-table on Moneris terminals.

For the full national comparison, including Quebec's tax quirks, see our guide to POS systems for independent restaurants in Canada.

Does Ontario's HST make choosing a POS easier?

Yes, and it's the thing most national comparisons skip. A lot of POS advice in Canada leans on tax: pick a Canadian-made system because it handles GST plus QST, or GST plus PST, out of the box. In Toronto, that argument mostly falls away. One harmonized rate, one line on the receipt, and every system on this list handles it.

Where Ontario does test your POS is at the edges:

• The $4 rule. Ontario rebates its 8% share of the HST at the till on prepared food and drinks sold for $4 or less, so a $3.75 coffee carries 5%, not 13%. If you run a café counter or a bakery case, your POS needs to apply that threshold on the total, not item by item.
• The tax holiday. From December 14, 2024 to February 15, 2025, the GST/HST break took the full 13% off restaurant food, non-alcoholic drinks, beer, and wine up to 22.9% alcohol, but not spirits or cocktails. Owners who could flip tax categories per item in five minutes had a calm December. Owners who needed a support ticket did not. If Ottawa does it again, you want to be in the first group.

So when a salesperson spends the demo on tax compliance, you can politely steer them back. In Ontario it's table stakes. Ask them about the next two sections instead.

What does a Toronto restaurant actually pay for card processing?

Here's the math for a 40-seat dine-in spot on Ossington doing $40,000 a month. Say 60% of sales come in on credit ($24,000), 35% on Interac debit ($14,000), 5% cash, with an average cheque of $60.

Only two companies on the list publish enough to run this without a quote, so here they are side by side on credit.

Monthly cost	Square Plus	Lightspeed Starter
Software	$60	$89
Credit processing ($24,000, 400 transactions)	$600	$664
Monthly total	$660	$753
Yearly total	$7,920	$9,036

Interac debit comes on top: about $121 a month on Square's published debit rate, or roughly $1,460 a year. Lightspeed's restaurant pricing page doesn't list a separate debit rate.

Look at the rows, not the totals. The software is $60 to $89. The credit processing is $600 to $664. That's ten times bigger, and it's the line nobody puts in the headline.

Now the part worth knowing. Since October 19, 2024, the federal deal with Visa and Mastercard caps the weighted average interchange on in-store consumer credit at 0.95% for small businesses (under $300,000 a year in Visa sales and $175,000 in Mastercard). Our Ossington example, at $288,000 a year in credit across both networks, qualifies. Interchange is the biggest piece of what a card really costs your processor, and on most personal cards it's now under 1%.

On a flat 2.5%, you pay the same rate whether that card cost the processor 0.8% or a premium rewards rate. Whether the 2024 cut reached your statement depends on your processor, and the CFIB flagged at the time that Stripe planned to keep the savings. On interchange-plus pricing, you'd see the cut line by line. We broke down how to check your own statement in interchange fee cuts: is your restaurant still overpaying?

Flat rate isn't wrong. For a new spot with lumpy volume, a known number is worth something. But once you're steady at $40,000 a month, the processing agreement deserves more of your attention than the software plan does. Our payment processing guide walks through the alternatives.

Who owns your POS company now?

Toronto is home base for a big chunk of Canadian restaurant payments, and 2026 reshuffled it.

• TouchBistro was bought by Harris Computer, part of Toronto's Constellation Software, announced July 7, 2026. The Globe and Mail reported a price of about $100 million. The 300-person team moved over, and Harris says it will keep investing.
• Moneris, headquartered on Bloor Street West and owned by RBC and BMO since 2000, is being sold to Francisco Partners, a US technology investment firm, for about $2 billion. Closing is expected by early 2027, and both banks will keep referring merchants to Moneris.
• TD's merchant business partly moved to Fiserv in 2025, which is why Clover now shows up in TD branch conversations.

None of this means your terminal stops working tomorrow. But a new owner can change pricing, bundling and renewal terms at your next contract date. Two practical moves: before you sign, ask what happens to your rate at renewal and whether the contract can be assigned to a new owner without your consent. And give real weight to month-to-month. The flexibility to leave is what keeps a vendor honest when the owner changes.

Toronto-specific checks before you sign

Tips and Ontario's ESA. Under the Employment Standards Act, you can deduct a credit card processing fee from tips (the greater of 1.5% of the tip or the actual pro-rated fee), but you can't deduct debit fees at all. Since June 21, 2024, tips must be paid by cash, cheque or direct deposit, and if an owner shares in the tip pool, the policy has to be posted in the workplace. Your POS has to split tips by payment type for any of that to work, so ask to see the tip report in the demo. Our tipping rules guide covers the rest.

Delivery integrations. Check that the POS pushes orders from the apps you actually use (Uber Eats, DoorDash, SkipTheDishes) straight to the kitchen instead of onto a second tablet by the pass. If delivery is a real channel, our DoorDash vs. Uber Eats vs. SkipTheDishes comparison is worth a read first.

Who shows up when it breaks. The local dealers in the Google map pack exist for a reason. As one operator put it on Reddit, "most IT places don't get why a POS going down during dinner rush is a crisis." A dealer who can drive to Leslieville on a Saturday is worth something. Just know that dealer pricing is negotiated, so get the processing rate in writing.

Hardware lock-in. TouchBistro runs only on iPad. Toast and Clover need their own hardware. Square runs on nearly anything. If you're financing proprietary terminals over several years, the hardware term is your real contract length, whatever the software agreement says.

Which POS would we pick in Toronto?

For a single-location dine-in independent, we'd start from the contract and the processing, not the feature list.

Opening, or under about $10,000 a month: Square Plus. You get a known rate, no lock-in, and your own devices. Reassess once volume is steady.

Established table service on iPad: TouchBistro, but only on a written quote with the add-ons you actually need priced in, and the renewal terms spelled out now that it has a new owner.

Planning a second location within a year: Lightspeed. The published pricing ladder is clear, and the multi-location reporting is where it earns the premium.

Counter service, café or bakery: Moneris Go Restaurant is worth a quote at $30 a month, especially if you're already a Moneris merchant. Test the $4 HST rule on a real transaction before you commit.

You want the deepest feature set and don't mind proprietary hardware: Toast. Get the Canadian processing rate in writing and model the hardware term.

One more thing. Your POS runs the bill, and it's not a reservation book. Bolt-on reservation modules tend to be pricey and thin, which is why most independents pair a POS with a dedicated tool. See how the pieces fit in our restaurant management software guide and reservation software comparison.

When you're ready to take reservations, Trudy's Table is built for Canadian independents. Canadian owned, $59 a month, because you shouldn't pay for features you'll never use.

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Sources: Square for Restaurants Canada pricing, Lightspeed Restaurant pricing, TouchBistro pricing, BetaKit, BMO, Moneris via Newswire, TD Stories, Department of Finance Canada, CRA GI-064, Restaurants Canada, Ontario ESA guide, CFIB.

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