Kickfin Teams With Shift4 to Automate Restaurant Tip Payments

Tip management software company Kickfin integrated with Shift4’s restaurant point-of-sale solution SkyTab.

The integration lets restaurants using SkyTab automatically determine tip pools or shares and send payouts straight to employees’ banks, according to a Tuesday (Aug. 6), press release.

“As an all-in-one restaurant platform, SkyTab has helped tens of thousands of restaurants modernize and optimize their operations,” Shift4 Senior Vice President of SkyTab Product Jay Shavitz said in the release. “Kickfin is a valuable addition to our marketplace, helping SkyTab customers realize significant time and cost savings by simplifying and improving the tip payout process.”

The integration helps restaurants develop “highly complex tip policies” and calculate tips based on roles, shifts, hours worked, points, sales categories and more, letting SkyTab customers distribute tips that arrive in employees’ bank accounts within seconds, the release said.

“With fewer cash transactions than ever before, digitizing tip management has become table stakes,” Kickfin co-CEO Brian Hassan said in the release. “Now the question is: Are you digitizing tip management in the best possible way? This integration gives thousands of SkyTab customers the power to fully automate their tip distribution process so they can save time, reduce risk, ensure compliance — all while making life easier for restaurant managers and their employees.”

Hassan told PYMNTS last year that consumers can barely buy a cup of coffee anymore without being asked to tip, a trend that businesses can take advantage of with digital tipping platforms that support instant payouts.

With the proper type of platform, the surge in tipping can be a boon for restaurants because they can pay workers immediately, leading to a higher take-home wage, which is what many employees are after.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote earlier this summer that consumers were growing frustrated with the surge in tipping and were taking to social media to complain.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Tipflation Is Changing Spending Habits of 1 in 6 Consumers” noted the change in tipping habits headed into 2024, finding that 29% of consumers believed tipping was “out of hand” and 17% of consumers reduced spending due to tips.