Product and Company News Archives

Kickfin Integrates with RPOWER POS to Automate Tip Distribution for Restaurants, Bars and Nightlife

Posted on March 6, 2025March 6, 2025 by Mike Rowan

You heard that right — Kickfin has added yet another partner to our ever-growing list of POS integrations!

RPOWER POS has joined the list of leading POS systems that now integrate with Kickfin so users can fully automate tip calculations and payouts.

RPOWER is a trusted name in the restaurant industry known for its handheld devices, online ordering capabilities, and robust reporting. RPOWER’s dedication to staying on the cutting edge of restaurant tech makes the integration with Kickfin a perfect match!

With the RPOWER-Kickfin integration, restaurant operators can:

Easily build out highly complex tip policies
Calculate tip outs based on roles, shifts and hours worked
Distribute tips directly to employee bank accounts
Establish an electronic “paper trail” for every tip out

( …and more. Dive into the latest Kickfin updates for the full scoop.)

Like all of our integration customers, when RPOWER users activate the Kickfin integration, they’ll have access to our robust Customer Success team (at no extra cost!). We’re here 24/7 to review and build out your tip policy within the platform, so you’ll be up and running in a flash.

Collaboration with Riot Hospitality Group

This integration was especially exciting because we worked hand-in-hand with one of our longstanding customers, Riot Hospitality Group, to ensure the integration checked every box — and that it could handle their complex tip pooling policies.

“Kickfin has been an outstanding partner to Riot Hospitality Group for years,” said J Goldin, the systems director for RHG.

“They had already helped us go fully cashless, which eliminated a lot of risk for our teams. When we decided to completely automate tip payouts, they were a natural choice to help with that as well. We worked hand in hand with Kickfin and RPOWER to ensure the system could handle the intense complexity of our rules, while still being incredibly easy to use for our operators.”

“Kickfin is easy to implement and easy to use. If you’re thinking about trying it, you’ll be glad you did.”

As our co-CEO Justin Roberts puts it, this integration is a “no brainer for RPOWER users who understand how valuable their managers’ time is.”

RPOWER users, we’re ready for you! Schedule a demo to learn how you can activate your integration.

(Not an RPOWER user but want to take advantage of these time-saving features? See if Kickfin is integrated with your POS!)

Kickfin Product Updates: New Year, New Features!

Posted on February 10, 2025February 10, 2025 by Mike Rowan

We kicked off 2025 with some major (!) updates to our Tip Calculator features.

It was a big release, and we’ll break it all down for you here — but the big headlines are:

More integrations
More speed
More flexibility

If you’re not already using Kickfin — or if you haven’t integrated Kickfin with your POS to automate tip calcs just yet — this is for you! Read on to see how you can use Kickfin’s newest tip calc features to un-clunk your tip pooling process.

More integrations, coming right up

We’re continuing to roll out integrations with the leading POS systems, giving restaurant teams the power to auto-calculate tip pools and shares in a matter of clicks.

(Side note: Kickfin only builds direct POS integrations — not using a third-party solution! — which streamlines your tech stack and keeps your costs lower.)

We were thrilled to add RPOWER to our growing list of integrations, which already includes Toast, Square, SkyTab, SpotOn, PAR and more.

If you’re an RPOWER user and you’re not yet a Kickfin customer, request a demo and we’ll show you the integration in action!

Handle autograts with ease

For servers and bartenders handling large parties, autograts can be great — but for managers, they can turn into a logistical nightmare. Now, Kickfin can help with that…

With this latest release, you can break tips and autograts into separate categories with their own set of rules for distribution. You have the flexibility to manage autograt tip splits completely separate from regular tip outs, so you can fairly reward a hardworking server-bartender-busser trio for a job well done on a 30-top.

Tips & Autograts Broken Out on Tip Data Page

Tips & Autograts Broken Out on Review Screen

With this new set up, you’ll also get more transparency in reporting. You’ll be able to see the breakdown of tips and autograts collected by each user in your reporting dashboards (more on that later!).

Include cash tips in your distributions

You heard that right — we can now distribute shares of cash tips digitally, directly to your employees’ bank accounts. Instead of doing the math on cash tips by hand, you can easily add cash to your tip pool, and we’ll calculate the share among employees for you.

Important note: cash distributions aren’t available for all of our integration partners. Contact us for more info.

Advanced Tip Rules (for even the unruliest policies)

Think your tip policy is extra tricky? Don’t worry — we’ve seen ‘em all. And there aren’t many Kickfin can’t handle, thanks to our Advanced Tip Rules feature.

If you have Advanced Tip Rules enabled, we’ve added a few new capabilities so you can further customize your tip share while we take care of the complicated math behind the scenes. Here are just a few examples of the new features we’re rolling out.

Not using Advanced Tip Rules? Reach out to us if you’d like to enable these features.

Per Segment Tip Sharing

We’ve been calculating tip shares on a check-by-check basis. For example, if you have servers sharing a percentage of tips with bussers, we would only calculate and deduct that percentage if a busser was working at the time that a check was processed. We call this Per Check Tip Sharing.

Now, we’re introducing Per Segment Tip Sharing, which gives you the option to deduct a tip share from every check processed during a shift. Let’s go back to our example — servers sharing a percent of tips with bussers. With Per Segment Tip Sharing, we would deduct a percentage of the server’s tip for every check processed, even if the busser gets cut two hours before the server.

Split Evenly

Would you prefer that all of your support staff take home an even share of their tip pool? We can now make that happen.

Previously, our tip shares entered a pool and were divided among beneficiaries based on how many minutes they worked during a shift, which we call splitting by Time Worked. With our new product update, we’re introducing the Split Evenly option, which enables you to send an equal part of a tip share to every beneficiary that worked within a segment.

More accuracy

In the past, cash autograt payments were lumped in with credit card autograts and credit card tips, resulting in credit card fee deductions on cash transactions. But that is no more!

Now we’re able to deduct credit card fees only where they apply, so you’ll no longer see credit card fee deductions attached to cash autograt transactions.

Plus, we’ve gotten even better at math. With our new update, we can prevent rounding errors, so our tip disbursal should match the tips collected in your POS to the penny.

Revamped and expanded reporting

We added new reporting views to give you more insight into each pay period, individual pay sets, and tip calculations. Here’s a quick look at your new pay period report with expanded filters:

Main Pay Period Report - Filter Bar Expanded

You’ll notice that there are now separate columns for tips and autograts, but you can still view the gross amount earned (tips + autograts = gross).

And it doesn’t stop at the main reporting page. You’ll see this more detailed reporting when you look at individual employee pay period reports, review a specific pay set, or export the information from any of your reporting dashboards.

We know this is a lot of new information to take in — but we’ve got you covered with our full Product Release Recap. Simply log in to Kickfin, click on your name in the upper left corner and select “Support” to access that portal.

Not using Kickfin? Dying to get rid of your old-fashioned gratuity management system? Drooling over these new features? We’d love to have you. Reach out to us today to see how our platform could save you time and money.

Kickfin Ranked 65th Fastest Growing Company on the 2024 Deloitte Technology Fast 500

Posted on December 3, 2024December 3, 2024 by Keely Hungate

We’re thrilled to announce that Kickfin made the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ list, a ranking of the 500 fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, fintech, and energy tech companies in North America.

How Kickfin stacks up

Overall, 2024 Technology Fast 500 companies achieved revenue growth ranging from 201% to 153,625% over the three-year time frame, with an average growth rate of 1,981% and median growth rate of 460%.

Our 2,144% revenue growth earned us the 65th spot on Deloitte’s list. It’s another exciting milestone for Kickfin — but more importantly, it’s a meaningful validation of our mission to take the clunk out of tip management, so payouts are faster, smarter and safer for every restaurant team we serve.

Based on Deloitte’s ranking, Kickfin is:

The highest-ranked restaurant tech company on the list
The *only* tip management company on the list
Austin’s fastest-growing tech company

Growth driven by product innovation, demand for automation

Kickfin was the first digital end-to-end tip management solution on the market — and with more than $2 billion payouts to more than 250,000 restaurant employees, we continue to be the largest and top-ranked.

Why?

It comes down to working the way our customers work — and not the other way around. Not only do we automate the tip pooling and payout process for thousands of restaurants and bars; no two tip policies are alike, so we’ve built a solution that gives them the flexibility and customization they require.

With more than $2 billion payouts to more than 250,000 restaurant employees, Kickfin continues to be the largest and top-ranked tip management software on the market.

That’s a big reason we’ve focused on building direct, robust integrations with the leading POS systems on the market. So far, we’ve rolled out integrations with Toast, SkyTab, Oracle, PAR, Heartland and Square — and the list continues to grow.

“In recent years, digital tip management has become table stakes,” said Justin Roberts, Kickfin’s co-founder and co-CEO.

“Operators now understand the significant efficiencies to be gained by eliminating manual tip-out processes. It’s no longer a question of ‘if,’ but ‘how.’ As a direct result of our commitment to innovation and customer success, we’re thrilled to see more and more restaurants select Kickfin to modernize their tip management.”

A big thank-you to our customers who trust us with their payouts, to our partners who support, collaborate (and integrate!) with us, and of course, every member of the Kickfin team.

About the Deloitte 500

Now in its 30th year, the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 provides a ranking of the fastest-growing

technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, fintech, and energy tech companies — both public and private — in North America. Technology Fast 500 award winners are selected based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2020 to 2023.

In order to be eligible for Technology Fast 500 recognition, companies must own proprietary intellectual property or technology that is sold to customers in products that contribute to a majority of the company’s operating revenues. Companies must have base-year operating revenues of at least US$50,000, and current-year operating revenues of at least US$5 million.

Additionally, companies must be in business for a minimum of four years and be headquartered within North America.

Ready to take the next step?

See how brands like Walk-On’s, Marco’s, Bar Louie and more are automating tip pooling and payouts with Kickfin. Schedule your 10-minute demo today!

Kickfin Ranked Fastest Growing Restaurant Tech Company | 2024 Inc. 5000

Posted on August 28, 2024August 28, 2024 by Keely Hungate

Kickfin ranked in the top 3% of Inc.’s 5000 fastest-growing companies — and we’re leading the charge for tip management software.

Every year, Inc. identifies 5,000 U.S.-based companies that have seen the highest rate of growth over the past three years based on revenue — and this year, Kickfin was at the top of the top.

A few stats we’re pretty proud of:

🏆 Kickfin ranked 189th overall.
🏆 We’re the fastest-growing restaurant tech company on the list.
🏆 We’re in the 💥 top 3%💥 of all 5000 companies.
🏆 We ranked 24th in the Software category.

Since 2020 — in spite of a pandemic, supply chain disruptions, The Great Resignation, and record-setting inflation — we’ve grown by 2,066%.

Our Keys to Success

We’ll cut right to the chase: We owe our success to our customers. (It’s not cliche if it’s true, right?)

The bottom is that we know the way you pay your staff matters, a lot. Thousands of restaurants are trusting us to handle that for them, and we don’t take that trust lightly.

And of course, we might be biased, but we think we’ve got the best team and partners in the biz. Thanks to everyone who has helped build, support and evangelize Kickfin. This has been a big year for our small but mighty company — and there’s a whole lot more to come.

This kind of growth doesn’t happen overnight. We’ve been putting in the work to make Kickfin even better for the thousands of restaurants we serve. Here are just a few ways we’ve expanded to better serve Kickfin customers.

Integrations

We’re making it easier to access and use Kickfin by integrating with dozens of leading POS systems, including Toast and SkyTab. Using our integration, managers can pull tip data directly from their POS and Kickfin will handle even the most complex tip calculations in a matter of minutes.

Thanks to our POS partnerships, we’re able to bring a further simplified version of Kickfin to new and existing customers so they can kick cash to the curb. As an early adopter of our Toast integration, Bar Louie has already saved around 15,000 hours in labor annually by cutting their tip calculation time from hours to minutes.

>> See more customer success stories

Find out if your POS integrates with Kickin, and reach out to our support team to learn how you can activate the integration.

New Features

Kickfin is no longer just an alternative to cash tip-outs — we’re a holistic solution to your entire tip management system.

In case you missed it, 2024 has been a big year for our product. In addition to our new integrations, we’ve rolled out some exciting new tip management features, including:

Splitting large party tips
Increased security
Reallocating manager tips
Preventing labor cost mistakes

>> Learn more about Kickfin’s newest features

Each of these new updates is inspired by requests from operators, managers and restaurant employees who use our product daily — and that’s something that will never change. As we continue to innovate our best-in-class tip management solution, we’ll always be listening to and learning from our customers so we can ensure every need is met and every expectation is exceeded.

What’s next for Kickfin?

We’re not stopping anytime soon. Expect to see more POS integrations, more user-friendly features, and more guidance from our amazing customer support team.

Not a Kickfin user yet? Now’s the time to rise with us! Get a demo of our restaurant-revolutionizing product today.

We’ll see you next year on the Inc. 5000!

Kickfin Announces New Integration with SkyTab

Posted on August 6, 2024August 6, 2024 by Keely Hungate

Exciting news: Kickfin has a new integration with SkyTab!

When SkyTab users activate the Kickfin integration in the Shift4 Marketplace, they’ll have the power to build custom tip pooling or sharing policies, calculate tip amounts, and send tip payouts directly to their employees’ bank of choice! Forget about hours of calculations and counting cash: your entire tip out process can be run in a matter of minutes.

“As an all-in-one restaurant platform, SkyTab has helped tens of thousands of restaurants modernize and optimize their operations,” said Jay Shavitz, Shift4’s SVP of SkyTab Product. “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.”

What does this mean for SkyTab customers?

If your restaurant is going to take advantage of the new Kickfin integration, here’s what to expect:

For employees: You’ll be able to leave your shift as soon as you finish your side work — no need to wait around for your manager to count out your tips in cash. All of your tips will instantly hit your bank account, saving you the trip to the ATM and empowering your financial decision-making.
Managers: Put away the calculators and spreadsheets. Using Kickfin through your POS will automate all of your complex calculations, allowing you to send tips with just the click of a button. Your late nights in the back office are over!

If you’re already a Kickfin customer, don’t hesitate to contact our support team for help setting up the integration.

When will Kickfin integrate with my POS?

We’re ready when you are! Check out our list of current integrations to see if yours is on there. If not, reach out to us! We’ll let you know if your integration is on our roadmap.

And hey, even if your POS doesn’t support a Kickfin integration (yet), we have simple solutions to your tip management headaches that don’t require an integration. We’d love to tell you more — so drop us a line today.

For more details about the SkyTab integration, check out the full press release here!

Kickfin x MasterCard: How Real-Time Payments Drive Better Experiences for Businesses and Employees

Posted on July 23, 2024July 25, 2024 by kickfinadmin

We know how important same-day payments are for veterans of the service industry who are accustomed to quick cash — and we’re now seeing that same demand expand into other industries as well.

Kickfin co-founder Justin Roberts joined MasterCard’s InConversation Webinar series to discuss why immediate payment disbursal is key for the restaurant industry and the gig economy as a whole.

Watch the webinar here or read our recap for the highlights:

People live paycheck-to-paycheck

Not just some people are living paycheck to paycheck. Most people are.

That’s right: around 64% of U.S. consumers are just getting by. Even more shocking, 51% of consumers who earn over six figures are still living paycheck to paycheck, despite their higher tax bracket.

It’s a major reason why employees need access to their earnings sooner rather than later. The pressure of watching your bank account slowly drain in the two weeks between payday is putting a lot of pressure on people, leading to a much greater demand for instant payments than ever before.

Instant payouts are now table stakes

A PYMNTS study found that people of all ages prefer to be paid out immediately, as well as some other interesting statistics:

When given the choice, 68% of respondents said they would opt for an instant pay out
40% of gig workers surveyed were willing to pay a fee for an instant disbursement
81% of respondents were willing to switch jobs to an employer that offers instant access to earned wages and tips

It’s safe to say instant payouts are becoming the expectation for today’s modern workforce. But not all instant payouts are created equal.

Consumers are much more likely to engage with an instant payout system if they aren’t required to share their bank account and routing numbers and can access funds with just their debit card credentials. Why? It’s faster, more convenient, and feels more secure.

Instant payouts and tip management: a perfect use case.

Instant payout innovation has come at the perfect time for the restaurant industry, which is struggling more than ever with the hassles and cost of cash.

If you’re in the restaurant biz, then you know: Most consumers pay with credit cards these days, not cash. That means there’s rarely enough cash on hand to pay out tips at the end of a shift. But employees still want and need instant access to their tip earnings.

Enter: instant payouts. Offering employees the option to receive their tip earnings directly to their bank of choice, the second their shift ends, can go a long way in improving employee satisfaction and ensuring their financial security.

But instant payouts are more than a work perk for employees. The operational benefits for employers range from reduced administrative burden and significant time savings to stronger compliance and streamlined reporting.

Modernizing your tip management strategy: 5 best practices

There are three key components to your tip management strategy:

Tip pool policy: How are you divvying up tips among your staff?
The payout method: How are you distributing those payments?
The systems and tech: What are you using to facilitate those payments?

Under the current circumstances, restaurant operators are under immense pressure to bring their tip management into the future.

5 best practices for tip management

Based on our experience working with restaurant operators across the country, we’ve found that these five practices are the perfect recipe for building a successful tip management system.

Determine the right model and method for your restaurant, based on your location and tech stack
Get a written tip policy (and get it legally approved)
Solicit employee feedback in a structured way
Leverage technology for efficiency, accuracy, and compliance
Don’t over-complicate (but do over-communicate!)

Tip management solution must-haves

When seeking a new tip management solution, make sure you carefully vet each system to see if it really meets your needs, or if it’ll be just as frustrating as cash. Here are a few suggestions for what should be on your checklist:

Instant payouts
Direct to bank of choice
Availability of employee funds
Payroll option
Integrations
Simple implementation + onboarding process
Around-the-clock customer service

Big emphasis on strong customer support teams. Restaurants and bars don’t have “typical” business hours, so neither should your tech support.

Bar Louie automates payouts with Kickfin

In a recent case study, we took a deep dive into our partnership with Bar Louie, a chain with over 60 locations that took advantage of our new integration with Toast. They made the switch from cash payouts to Kickfin’s instant, direct-to-bank payouts and haven’t looked back.

Two-minute tip-outs

Before Kickfin, managers spent an average of 45 minutes per shift working through Bar Louie’s complex tip out policy and counting cash. The tip pooling rules were important to them — it’s what makes the entire staff feel like they’re getting their fair share.

Using the Kickfin Toast integration, Bar Louie was able to automate the tip pool calculation process and send tips straight to employees in under two minutes – a potential annual savings of 15,000 labor hours across all locations.

>> See more customer success stories

Do you want to see these kinds of cost-saving results at your business? Let’s talk. Get a demo of Kickfin and see why restaurant owners and employees alike trust us to manage their tips.

New Tip Calculation Features You Don’t Want To Miss

Posted on July 11, 2024July 24, 2024 by Kaley Pigman

Big news: Kickfin’s best-in-class tip calculation tool has some exciting new bells and whistles.

If you’re already using Kickfin’s tip pool calculator, then you know how much time and hassle you’re saving by automating everything. (And if you’re not? Head over to our tip pooling software page to see how it works!)

As we partner with more restaurants to bring their tip management into the future, we’re continuing to innovate our product so we can address their biggest pain points.

In this case, that means enhancing our tip pooling features so you can auto-calculate tip amounts even for the most complex tip pool or share policies.

Check out a few of our latest features that will make tip calculations easier than ever.

🕺 Splitting large party tips

If your restaurant often hosts large parties, you know that the tip share can get confusing. Say one server is taking care of a party of 40 with a bartender assigned to only make drinks for that party. Meanwhile, the server has a few other two-top tables that are getting drinks from the main service bar. At the end of the night, how do you ensure that the large-party bartender gets their fair share of the tip out (without spending an hour on your phone calculator)?

Kickfin can now automate that process for you, alleviating questions from your event bartender and saving time and effort on the part of your managers.

📲 Seamless POS integrations

Kickfin is partnering with the top POS systems to integrate seamlessly with your existing restaurant tech — including Toast, Heartland, Shift4 and more.

DID YOU KNOW? Kickfin integration users get access to new product features first, like our new tip-out transparency tool — which allows your staff to log into their Kickfin accounts and see exactly how their tips have been split between team members. An added layer of visibility can go a long way in cultivating trust (and eliminating those pesky tip disputes).

💸 (Re)Allocation of manager tips

We’re always listening to feedback to improve the Kickfin experience, and this one goes out to all of our restaurant partners who asked us to streamline the manager tip reallocation process.

>>Learn more about managers and tipping laws

In most cases, managers are not allowed to earn tips since they are salaried employees. But we all know that managers often step in and take care of tables to help servers get out of the weeds. Well-meaning guests will most likely leave a tip, not knowing that the manager technically can’t accept them — so where does that money go?

Kickfin now features a default pool, where tips “paid” to a manager are automatically redistributed to tipped staff based on your restaurant’s tip policy.

🤓 Improved labor data accuracy

We all know how easy it is for an employee to forget to clock out after a long shift. And sure, they aren’t going to get paid for a 16-hour overnight shift, but when payday comes around, those extra hours create a nightmare for your payroll team.

With Kickfin, all employees are required to be clocked out in order to finalize payments — so you’ll catch the labor data mistake long before your payroll team has to sort it out.

🔑 Even better security

We’re committed to protecting your business (and your employees’ hard-earned money), so we’re adding an extra layer of security for certain transactions.

You can now enable double approval of payments that meet certain conditions:

First payment for new employees
Employees getting their first payout in X number of days
Employees receiving more than X payouts in a 24-hour period.

With these extra guardrails in place, you can always be sure that the right money is going to the right person. Reach out to our support team to configure your custom security measures.

Using Kickfin is a win-win for operators, managers, and employees alike. Restaurateurs save on cash delivery and labor costs, managers shave hours off their workload, and servers have the same instant payment that they’re used to — without the hassle and uncertainty of cash.

Want to learn more about Kickfin? Let us show you the ropes with a 10-minute demo!

Kickfin Announces Integration with Toast

Posted on July 11, 2024August 12, 2024 by Kaley Pigman

Kickfin has officially been added to the Toast Marketplace — making it easier than ever for thousands of Toast users to auto-calculate tips and pay them out in real time.

Toast is a favorite POS system for restaurants, food trucks, and bars. And now, Toast has partnered with Kickfin to launch an integration that makes tip pooling and payouts faster, smarter and safer for restaurant teams.

Why should I integrate?

When you automate calculations by integrating Kickfin with Toast, you can save even more time, get full visibility into payment calculations and history, and ensure the accuracy of every payout.

Specifically, the Kickfin-Toast integration gives you the power to:

Calculate tips in seconds with real-time tip and labor data from Toast.
Implement highly customized tip sharing policies with a few clicks of a button.
Incorporate shifts, hours worked, points, sales categories, and more in your tip rules.
Maintain an electronic record of each tip and the calculations used.
Easily track tips by pay period for reporting and taxation.

How do I add the Kickfin integration?

For current Kickfin users, follow these 3 steps to implement the Toast integration:

Activate your site: If you’re interested in launching the Kickfin-Toast integration, visit the Toast Marketplace and activate your site(s).
Complete an Automation Analysis: Once activated, the Kickfin team will contact you to gather your written tip policy and example spreadsheet from recent payouts. We’ll use these documents to help you set your custom tip calculation rules within Kickfin.
Go live! You’re ready to auto-calculate tip amounts and (finally!) say so-long to spreadsheets. 🎉

Not a Kickfin user yet? No problem! You can still activate your site on the Toast Marketplace. Then, reach out to our team at sales@kickfin.com or book a meeting from our demo form, and we’ll help you get set up!

Customer Spotlight: Bar Louie Launches Kickfin-Toast Integration

Bar Louie takes great pride in making tip distribution equitable for all of their employees, so they rely on a complex tip pooling system to ensure fair pay.

Prior to using Kickfin, managers spent 45 minutes at the end of every shift to calculate tip amounts and divvy up funds to all of their servers. Now, they’ve streamlined their tip-out process with the Kickfin-Toast integration — and managers are doing the same work in less than a minute. Across all 60 locations, that’s a potential annual savings of 15,000 hours.

>> Hear more Kickfin success stories

More integrations, coming right up

We’re excited about our new partnership with Toast and the opportunity to make digital tipping a reality for their customers. For restaurants who aren’t using Toast, don’t worry! We’re rolling out integrations with other leading POS systems, including Shift4/SkyTab, Heartland, Oracle, and more.

For more information about Kickfin’s POS integrations, head over to our Integrations page, or check out a demo of our platform.

Kickfin Makes Inc.’s List of Top 10 Fastest Growing Companies in the Southwest

Posted on April 29, 2024April 29, 2024 by Mike Rowan

No growing pains here!

We’re thrilled to announce that Inc. listed Kickfin in their list of the top 10 fastest growing companies in the Southwest. (In fact, we earned the #1 spot in the software category and were listed as #9 overall!) We’re honored to be included alongside innovative companies that are making a big difference in our region.

Inc. measured Kickfin’s growth from 2020 to 2022 — which wasn’t an easy time for the restaurant industry, to say the least. In spite of the challenges posed by the pandemic, restaurant concepts across the country embraced Kickfin’s technology.

As a group, the 2024 Inc. honorees averaged 136% growth and created 17,606 new jobs over a two-year period. Individually, Kickfin grew by a whopping 1,304% (yes, really!).

We want to recognize and thank both our amazing customers and the Kickfin team for being part of our success story and allowing us to be a part of theirs.

Our Customers

For years, restaurants manually calculated and paid out cash tips — despite the increasing hassle and liability those old-school methods entail. It’s not because operators are tech-averse; there simply wasn’t a good way to automate the process that didn’t create new friction or require new workarounds.

That’s precisely why we developed Kickfin. Of course, we’re proud of what we built and the team behind it (more on that below). But we owe a great deal of our success to the customers who trusted us enough to give Kickfin a shot — especially those early adopters who are now some of our longest-standing customers.

There’s a leap of faith involved when you partner with a vendor and layer in new technology, particularly when it impacts something as important and sensitive as how you pay your people. We don’t take that lightly, and we are incredibly grateful for the opportunity to serve each and every customer who’s been on this journey with us.

>> Hear from our customers about their experiences with Kickfin

Our Team

Every person on our team wholeheartedly believes in our mission and vision for the future. In short: we’re here to make the tip management process insanely easy for everyone so that paying out your people is (almost!) as great as getting paid.

As backstory: Our co-founders, Brian and Justin, came up with the idea for Kickfin while dining out together and noticing that an armored car was dropping off cash. They asked why a restaurant would need a cash delivery when most patrons pay by card; the manager explained the cash was needed to pay out tips at the end of the shift. The inefficiency (and expense, and risk…) of that process was a lightbulb moment for Brian and Justin.

They set out to build a team who not only understood the problem, but could think critically and creatively about a solution — and bring it to life.

From sales and marketing to product and support, every Kickfin employee has had a hand in the growth and success of our company, thanks to their passion for our purpose and their commitment to being best in class.

We’re proud of what we’ve achieved thus far, and we’re excited to continue collaborating with our customers, innovating on their behalf, and taking Kickfin to the next level together. Onward and upward!

Electronic Transactions Association Recognizes Kickfin as Top 10 ISV

Posted on February 21, 2023March 7, 2023 by Keely Hungate

AUSTIN, Texas (February 21, 2023) — The Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) today announced that Kickfin has been named a Top 10 Payments Independent Software Vendor (ISV).

ETA launched this award in 2023 to recognize ISVs that are offering disruptive software solutions, making a recognizable impact, and driving the payments industry forward.

“The hospitality workforce truly makes the world go around. We built Kickfin because we wanted to change the way those front-line employees are paid, for the better,” said Kickfin co-founder Justin Roberts. “Electronic Transactions Association’s recognition of Kickfin underscores our leading position in the digital tipping category and is a meaningful validation of our mission to reimagine employee payments.”

Ranked the #1 tipping software, Kickfin is the nation’s largest provider of instant, cashless tip payments. Restaurants, bars and hotels use Kickfin to digitally accept, calculate and tip-out their employees in real-time. By removing cash from the tip payment process, businesses can focus on delighting their customers, while maximizing the earning potential of their people.

ETA’s recognition of Kickfin underscores our leading position in the digital tipping category and is a meaningful validation of our mission to reimagine employee payments.

To be considered for the ETA Top 10 award, candidates had to be ISVs that are “integrating payments solutions that disrupt the industry and drive payments forward.” Software solutions were judged on whether they add significant value to the organizations that use them, and whether they deepen the relationship between the user and the chosen platform.

Additionally, winning ISVs needed to demonstrate:

Enhanced user experience
Improved payments security and PCI DSS Compliance
A quicker, more efficient payments process for merchants
Increased revenue generation and stickiness

Kickfin will accept its Top 10 Payments ISV award at TRANSACT, ETA’s annual convention, April 24-26 in Atlanta.

To learn more about Kickfin’s digital tipping software, visit kickfin.com/demo.