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Somewhere between installing your card reader and tonight's last table, someone chose three numbers that decide how much tip your team takes home. It probably wasn't anyone on your staff.
Every card reader installed in the last few years does the same thing: before the receipt prints, a screen appears with two or three suggested tip percentages. SumUp, Zettle, Adyen, Viva Wallet — the buttons look different on each, but the idea is identical. At installation the payment provider proposes defaults, the owner taps "next", and those numbers stay exactly where they were set. Years later, nobody has ever touched them again.
That would be harmless if a tip screen simply showed three neutral options. It doesn't. The first number a guest sees becomes the reference point their own decision gets built around — a mechanism behavioural economics has called the anchoring effect for fifty years. A guest with no clear idea what counts as "appropriate" lets the screen decide for them. Show 5%, 10% and 15%, and the average tip lands somewhere near the middle number. Show 15%, 18% and 25%, and that same average shifts upward with it — without a single guest feeling like anything was engineered.
This guide walks through three configurations you can find on real card readers today: a modest screen, a standard screen, and a generous, US-inspired screen. For each, we look at what it likely does to your tip income, and what it does to how a guest experiences the bill — because those two don't always move in the same direction. Further down, plug in your own numbers and see both side by side.
None of this is an argument for manipulating guests. It's the opposite: if the screen is already steering behaviour — and it is, by design or not — you're better off deciding what it steers than letting a payment provider decide it for you at installation.
Why a tip screen is never neutral
The anchoring effect comes from one of the best-known experiments in behavioural economics: psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman showed in 1974 that when asked to estimate an uncertain quantity, people systematically let themselves be pulled toward the first number they're shown — even when that number is random. People do adjust afterward in the direction that seems reasonable, but that adjustment is almost always too small. The anchor wins.
On a tip screen, that isn't theory. Cornell University professor Michael Lynn has studied what drives tip amounts for decades, and his research on suggested amounts points consistently the same way: a higher suggested percentage shifts what guests eventually choose, without a proportional rise in the number of guests who refuse to tip at all. That's exactly why nearly every card-reader provider now defaults to three preset percentages instead of a blank field — a blank field doesn't sell itself, three buttons do. The same bias is also why a supplier deliberately opens with a high first price: see the anchoring effect in supplier negotiations for the mirror image of this story, where the anchor works against you instead of for your team.
The same bias, two completely different conversations — in one it works for your team, in the other against your wallet.
A high opening price pulls the price you eventually pay upward — the anchor works against you here.
A high suggested percentage pulls what a guest eventually taps upward — the same anchor, but now it works for your team.
In both cases, the first number someone sees wins: an opening offer in a negotiation, or a suggested percentage on a screen. The only difference is who sets the anchor.
And that's exactly where Europe tells a different story from America. In the United States, tipping is part of the wage: the minimum wage for serving staff is structurally lower, and an 18 to 20% "service charge" at the bottom of the bill is normal there, sometimes even mandatory. In Belgium — and across most of continental Europe — that isn't the case: the menu price is legally required to be all-inclusive, VAT and service are already built in, as we also explain in our article on tipping policy. A tip here is a voluntary gesture on top of a service that's already paid for. A US-imported screen suggesting 15%, 18% and 25% therefore sets a completely different expectation than what a European guest is used to — and a guest who feels pushed into that number doesn't forget it. A 2023 Pew Research Center survey of American consumers themselves found exactly that pattern: a majority reported feeling annoyed by how often, and how high, tip screens now ask. If that's already true in a country where tipping is expected, it holds even more where it isn't.
Free guide The complete staff guide Everything about hospitality staff, from hiring to wellbeing, in one overview. Read the guideThe three screens, and what each one does
All three exist today, on real card readers in real European venues. The difference isn't in the technology — it's entirely in which three numbers are on it.
Same guest, same screen design — only the three percentages differ. The dot shows where the average tip lands at a 3% baseline with no screen and a moderate anchor pull.
Without a screen: 3.0%. With this screen: 4.8%.
Without a screen: 3.0%. With this screen: 6.2%.
Without a screen: 3.0%. With this screen: 8.3%.
The dot is an estimate based on the assumptions in the calculator further down — the stronger the anchor pulls, the further right it slides.
1. The modest screen — 5%, 8%, 10%
This screen matches what most Europeans already did before a screen ever existed: round up the bill, leave a few euros, no fixed percentage. The middle number, 8%, sits close enough to what's already customary here that it doesn't feel like a push — it confirms what a guest was already planning to do.
That's exactly why the modest screen produces the smallest extra tip income of the three. The anchor is weak because it sits close to the baseline, and a weak anchor pulls very little. What it does deliver is the lowest risk of friction: no guest feels cornered here, and the lowest button — the number a guest reads first to decide whether the whole screen feels "reasonable" — sits right next to what people are already used to.
For a venue that runs mostly on regulars, or in a region where tipping is traditionally modest, this is often the right call: it adds something without ever becoming a conversation.
2. The standard screen — 8%, 12%, 15%
This has become the most common configuration on European card readers, and not by accident: it sits right at the point where the anchor starts to pull noticeably without yet coming across as conspicuously high. The middle number, 12%, sits clearly above what an unguided guest would spontaneously give, but not so far above that the screen itself draws attention.
The result is a genuine trade-off: a noticeable rise in what reaches the team, against a friction level most guests don't even register as steering. The lowest button, 8%, is already higher than what many guests here used to consider "a decent tip" — the screen is quietly normalising that number into the new floor, which over time also shifts the next generation of guests' expectations.
For most independent venues, this is the screen to run by default, precisely because it holds the best balance in this whole trade-off — not because it produces the most tips, but because it produces the most tip per unit of friction.
3. The generous, US-inspired screen — 15%, 18%, 25%
This screen rarely comes from a deliberate European choice — it's usually what a provider ships by default because its software was originally built for the US market, or what an owner copied after seeing it somewhere else. The middle number, 18%, is a common minimum for service in the United States. In a country where service is already priced in, it isn't a minimum — it's a surprise.
On paper, it produces the highest average tip of the three: the anchor is strong and pulls hard. But the lowest button, 15%, is already more than many European guests would ever spontaneously give for an ordinary meal — and that's precisely the number a guest bases their judgment of the whole screen on. A meaningful share of those guests then deliberately choose "no tip" or type in their own, lower amount, purely to escape the feeling of being steered. That rarely shows up in your tip figures themselves, but it does show up in the occasional Google review that uses the word "pushy".
There are venues where this screen genuinely fits — a fine-dining concept with a strongly international, often American clientele, for instance — but that's the exception, not the starting point. Copying a screen built for a different audience because it promises "more" is the most common mistake in this entire story.
Run the numbers for your own venue
Enter your own average bill and the number of card payments per month, and pick one of the three screens. The calculator shows what the screen likely produces in extra tips, and how much friction the lowest button carries.
Two numbers are yours to adjust: the tip guests already give here with no screen at all, and how much of the screen's pull you think actually carries through. That second number is an estimate, not a settled fact — anchoring research is clear about the direction, not about an exact percentage for your venue. Play with it and see when the conclusion flips.
Tip screen simulator
Your numbers, three screens, and the trade-off between extra tips and guest friction.
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This is a calculation built on an assumption you set yourself, not a guaranteed outcome — the anchoring effect is well documented, its exact size varies by venue, guest and country. Everything runs in your browser; nothing is sent or stored.
Two things to take from this calculation. First: the extra tip income and the friction risk don't always move together — a higher screen usually produces both more money and more friction at once, and there's no combination that maximises both.
Second: the lowest button carries more weight in how a guest judges the whole screen than the middle button most people actually end up tapping. If you want to lower the risk without giving up much of the upside, look at that lowest number first, not the middle one.
How to set it up yourself this week
Changing the screen doesn't need a developer or a new device — it's a setting in your payment provider's app, usually filed under "tip" or "gratuity" in the settings.
- Check which three percentages your card reader shows today — chances are you never set them yourself.
- Decide which of the three screens above fits your guests: a neighbourhood café with regulars rarely suits the same screen as a tourist-facing terrace.
- Never set the lowest button higher than what an average guest here already considers "a decent tip" — that's the number that decides your friction risk.
- Ask your team after two weeks whether they're getting comments at the till, and check new reviews yourself for any mention of tipping.
- Repeat the setup whenever you switch payment provider: a new device starts again with that provider's own defaults, not with yours.
The screen doesn't choose for you — unless you let it
A tip screen is no more neutral technology than a menu or a price tag is. It's a small, repeated moment of steering that a payment provider filled in for you the day your card reader was first connected, and that has run every single night since without anyone looking at it again.
That's exactly why this article doesn't name a single "best" screen. The modest screen fits a venue that runs on trust, the standard screen fits most others, and the generous screen fits an exceptional audience that's genuinely used to it too. What holds for every venue: the choice deserves a deliberate look, not the default setting of an app you never opened.
Once the screen is set the way you want it, the rest of the tipping story is about dividing it fairly. Read our article on tipping policy for how to spread incoming tips fairly across your team, and who's legally entitled to them once they arrive by card instead of cash in a jar.