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Visa acceptance for restaurants

Put Visa acceptance on the menu    

Accepting Visa in your restaurant means gains in efficiency, potential for increased sales, and access to more customers. Manage your risk and stay secure!

For restaurant managers, accepting Visa can deliver clear benefits:        

  • Potential for increased sales: Cardholders may gravitate toward establishments that accept cards, and may, in turn, spend more than cash customers. More than half of consumers say they are likely to avoid a business that does not accept payment cards1.
  • Access to more customers: With 2 billion cards issued worldwide and acceptance in 200 countries and territories, Visa acceptance can help you reach more people2.   
  • More satisfied customers: People appreciate having payment options, and Gen Y customers, in particular, tend to prefer using debit and credit cards rather than cash. In fact, for 24- to 30-year-olds, 63 percent of monthly spending is on a card3.

1 Source: U.S. Visa Acceptance Survey, June 2009

2 Source: Visa Inc. data, as of 31 March 2011

3 Source: Forrester Research. Online Bill Payment Forecast 2009-2014

Manage risk, stay secure

With Visa, you can scale your business to conduct speedy transactions and accommodate more diners, knowing the world’s largest retail electronic payments processing network is behind you. VisaNet handles an average of 150 million transactions every day and is capable of handling more than 24,000 transactions per second4.  Our security efforts have kept global fraud rates near historic lows, enabling merchants to accept Visa with confidence.

4 Source: Based on testing conducted in August 2010 with IBM

Special protection for restaurants

Restaurants face unique issues around processing tips and preventing card skimming. Visa has developed materials to help you navigate these situations and train your employees. For example, to protect your business, Visa ensures that restaurant authorizations are valid for the tab amount plus 20 percent, so there is little or no chargeback liability when a tip is not included in an authorization request. 

Read Visa’s best practices for processing gratuities

Invested in the future of restaurants

Our ongoing commitment to safe, reliable transactions is just one way Visa supports our restaurateurs’ goals to attract new customers and grow their businesses. Visa also innovates around new products and technologies to broaden available payment options. These include initiatives around mobile payments for even faster checkout, and chip cards for extra security.

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