Adyen will process payments for Toast in the US, the two companies said on August 10, 2026, extending a partnership that has covered Ireland, the UK, Canada, and Australia since 2021. Toast, which sells software to restaurants, hospitality, and retail businesses, facilitated more than $215 billion in gross payment volume in the 12 months ended June 30, 2026, across about 180,000 locations worldwide. The deal gives the Dutch payments company a foothold in its client’s home market, by far the largest of the five.
Adyen joins Toast’s existing US processors rather than replacing them. Most Toast locations are in the US, where Worldpay and JPMorgan Payments already handle its back-end processing, according to Digital Transactions. “Toast is adding Adyen to our U.S. payments ecosystem. It joins other existing partners,” a Toast spokesperson told the publication.
Both companies pitch speed and reliability
“Speed, control, and reliability matter, especially in service-based businesses like restaurants, retail, or hospitality,” said Blake Breathitt, SVP and global co-head of strategy at Adyen. Michel Rbeiz, general manager of fintech at Toast, called the US deal “a natural expansion of that relationship, as we offer operators stability in processing and enable them to stay focused on running successful businesses and delighting their guests.”
Toast sells software, and payments come with it
Toast is one of the vertical software providers that have turned into payment providers. A restaurant buys point-of-sale, online ordering, and back-office software, and gets payment acceptance in the same contract, with no separate application to an acquiring bank. This embedded payments model has taken hold in restaurants, healthcare, and real estate because it removes the friction of opening a merchant account and turns a software license into revenue that grows with processed volume.
- The software provider signs the acceptance agreement and handles merchant onboarding.
- The POS, the terminal, and the back office come from a single vendor.
- Revenue tracks processed volume, on top of the software subscription.
- Merchant default and dispute risk moves to the software provider, which has to reserve for it.
Restaurants add complications of their own: tips added after authorization, checks split across several cards, pay-at-the-table by QR code, and online orders captured at pickup. Each one calls for adjustments, delayed capture, or partial settlement, and acquirers do not all handle them the same way.
Why a platform this size adds acquirers
A platform that processes hundreds of billions of dollars a year is reluctant to depend on a single processor. Adding an acquirer serves three separate purposes: keeping service running if one platform has an outage, routing each transaction to whichever path gets the best authorization rate or unit cost, and gaining leverage in negotiations with an incumbent provider. Toast framed the deal as an addition to its US payments ecosystem, and no replacement has been announced.
| Criterion | Single acquirer | Multi-acquirer setup |
|---|---|---|
| Service continuity | Depends on one platform | Failover possible during an outage |
| Authorization rate | Whatever the acquirer delivers | Optimized through routing |
| Processing cost | Negotiated once | Put out to competition continuously |
| Reconciliation | One settlement stream | Multiple streams to normalize |
| Compliance | One set of rules | Rules and controls to align |
Adyen is also pitching financial services
The deal covers payment processing, but Adyen is looking further. It is promoting its card issuing, capital, and business account products, built in-house on a single platform, as a long-term opportunity for Toast. These are the building blocks that let a platform offer its customers a spending card, a cash advance backed by future card sales, or a dedicated account. They shift the relationship from a processing contract toward outsourced banking services, which earn significantly more per merchant than acceptance alone.
The announcement comes as US vertical software platforms account for a growing share of merchant acceptance, and as European providers look for volume outside Europe. For Adyen, Toast’s US base is volume already in place, with no merchant acquisition cost. For Toast, another processor gives it room to move on the two levers that directly set the margin of its payments business: authorization rate and unit cost.