Zayos and Stripe, where your money actually goes
Published July 2026 · Updated July 26, 2026
Stripe processes every direct order on Zayos. The card never touches us. Money goes to your own Stripe account, then to your bank on your own payout schedule. You keep 100 percent of the food revenue and 100 percent of tips. Stripe bills its own processing rate.
Free, 60 seconds, no card. It shows what your current channel mix keeps and what it gives away.
Who is actually holding my money?
You are, through your own Stripe account. When a diner pays on your Zayos storefront, the charge runs into a Stripe account that is in your restaurant’s legal name, connected to your bank. Zayos is not a middleman with a balance, and there is no weekly settlement from us to you. That single fact is worth checking with any ordering vendor you talk to, because plenty of them do sit in the middle.
The other half of the arrangement is compliance. Card data goes straight to Stripe and never reaches Zayos servers, so the storage and handling burden stays with Stripe. You get the payout and the receipt. Stripe gets the regulator.
What does one $42 delivery ticket actually look like?
Every line of a single order, and who ends up with it. This is the whole model on one screen.
| Line | Amount | Ends up with | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Food and modifiers | $42.00 | You | The restaurant keeps 100 percent of food revenue. Zayos takes no percentage of a ticket, on any channel, ever. |
| Tip | $6.00 | You | 100 percent of tips. Zayos does not touch tips and does not take a share of them. |
| Sales tax | Your state rate | The state | Collected at checkout with the order. If DAVO is connected, the tax portion is set aside daily instead of sitting in your operating account waiting to be spent. |
| Zayos service fee | $2.99 | Zayos | Paid by the diner at checkout, on top of the food. $0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery, $0 dine-in, 10 percent on catering. The restaurant never pays it and never sees an invoice for it. |
| Card processing | Stripe’s published rate | Stripe | Billed by Stripe against your own Stripe account. Zayos does not set that rate, does not mark it up, and does not take a cut of it. |
| Courier rate, delivery orders only | Quoted by distance | The courier network | Charged by the courier network that carries the bag. Not a Zayos fee, not a percentage of the ticket. |
Read the third column twice. No line says a percentage of your food goes to a platform. That is the difference between this and a marketplace ticket, where 15 to 30 percent base commission, and 25 to 35 percent blended once delivery, marketing and processing stack, comes off the top before the kitchen turns on a burner. Run your own numbers in the commission recovery calculator.
When does the money hit my bank?
On the payout schedule set on your own Stripe account, and every payout shows its expected arrival date in your Stripe dashboard. We are deliberately not printing a number of days here, because your schedule is yours to set and a marketing page is the wrong place to learn your cash flow.
The operator habit that matters: reconcile against the payout calendar, not the sales report. A Saturday that sold well is not a Saturday that is funded. This is not a Zayos quirk, it is how card money works everywhere, including your terminal at the counter.
What do I have to do to connect Stripe?
This is the one step in Zayos onboarding that only you can do, because Stripe requires the account holder. You complete Stripe’s own onboarding with your legal business name, EIN or the owner’s SSN for a sole proprietor, business address, bank routing and account numbers, and an identity check. It is typically minutes, not days, and it happens inside Stripe.
Say this part out loud to your managers: you enter those details with Stripe, never with us. Nobody at Zayos will ever ask you for a bank login, a full card number or a password. Anyone who does is not us.
Who eats a refund, and who eats a chargeback?
A refund is your decision. You issue it against the order, full or partial, and Stripe returns it to the diner’s card. Nobody at a marketplace overrules you, and nobody refunds your customer without telling you, which is a genuine and regular annoyance on the app side.
A chargeback is different: the cardholder’s bank decides it, and neither Stripe nor Zayos can decide it for you. What you get from Zayos is the evidence file, meaning the order record, the timestamps, the items, and the delivery confirmation, which you submit through Stripe. Restaurants that respond with the receipt attached do better than restaurants reconstructing a Friday from memory three weeks later.
What does the Stripe integration not do?
Zayos never sees or stores a card number
That is the design, not a limitation to apologize for. Stripe captures and holds the card, so the PCI compliance burden stays with Stripe instead of landing on you. It also means we cannot look up a diner’s card, re-run a card, or key in a card for a phone order on your behalf.
We cannot open your Stripe account for you
Stripe requires the account holder to complete its own onboarding: legal business name, EIN or the owner’s SSN for a sole proprietor, business address, bank routing and account numbers, and an identity check. You enter that with Stripe directly. Nobody at Zayos should ever ask you for a bank login, a full card number or a password. If anyone does, it is not us.
It does not front you money
Payouts move after the charge settles, on the payout schedule set on your own Stripe account. A busy Saturday does not become cash in your account on Saturday. Plan payroll against your payout calendar, not against your sales report.
It cannot refund a marketplace order
A DoorDash, Uber Eats or Grubhub order was paid inside that app, so its refund lives in that app. Stripe only handles the orders placed on your own Zayos site. This surprises operators who see all four channels on one Otter tablet and assume the money works the same way. It does not.
It does not win chargebacks for you
A dispute is decided by the cardholder’s bank, not by Stripe and not by us. What Zayos gives you is the evidence: the order record, timestamps, items, the delivery confirmation. You submit it in Stripe. A merchant with the receipt in hand wins more of these than a merchant reconstructing a Saturday from memory.
Where the tax portion of that ticket goes is its own subject, handled daily rather than at filing time. The rest of the connected stack, POS included, is listed on integrations, and the POS side in depth on the restaurant POS integration guide.
Money questions, answered plainly
Does Zayos hold my money before I get paid?
What does card processing cost on Zayos?
Am I PCI compliant if I take orders on my own website?
Can my customers pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay?
What happens when I need to refund a customer?
Does Stripe replace my card terminal at the counter?
New to the whole model? Start with what Zayos is, then the plan detail on pricing.
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