EPOS Now and Dojo: what really ended the integration and what UK businesses should do next

Monday morning. The card machine and the till used to communicate silently, transaction amounts flowing from one to the other without anyone touching a keypad. They no longer do. Someone now keys in every sale by hand. The queue builds. Mistakes appear. End-of-day reconciliation, which once took minutes, now takes an hour.

That is the daily reality for UK hospitality and retail businesses that depended on the integration between EPOS Now and Dojo. The connection is gone. And many of those businesses were given an explanation that did not match what actually happened.

What actually happened

EPOS Now has been withdrawing the integration with Dojo for many customers. The decision came from EPOS Now.

That is not the version some customers received. Reports from affected businesses describe a consistent pattern: calls from sales teams explaining that the integration was ending, with Dojo presented as the party pulling out. Some customers were told Dojo was withdrawing because their accounts were not profitable enough. Others were told Dojo had made a commercial decision to step back from the partnership.

Neither version reflected the facts. Dojo did not initiate the split.

Why EPOS Now made the call

EPOS Now has been building its own payment processing service for some time. EPOS Now Payments is the in-house product it now pushes to customers. In December 2024 the company acquired Yoello, a Cardiff-based fintech focused on QR ordering and embedded payments. The direction of travel was already clear before that acquisition.

EPOS Now wants to own the payment layer, not share the processing revenue with a third party.

The commercial logic is straightforward. When a business runs Dojo terminals through an EPOS Now till, Dojo earns the card processing margin and EPOS Now earns its software subscription. The moment EPOS Now moves those customers onto EPOS Now Payments, it takes the processing revenue too. Every customer it converts is a customer whose transaction margin it now keeps in full.

Removing the Dojo integration creates pressure to move. Describing that pressure as Dojo's decision makes it harder for the customer to push back.

What customers were actually told

The pattern emerging from Trustpilot reviews posted in April and May 2026 is consistent. Long-standing customers received calls from EPOS Now sales teams describing an imminent integration end. Dojo was presented as the party pulling out.

Louise, who had used EPOS Now since 2019, wrote: "The sales team told me lies about Dojo. They also said other card payment systems would not work with Epos Now. They also said I'd have to pay fees. All lies."

A Troth, a five-year customer, wrote: "I received an email with only 4 working days informing me that there would no longer be an integration option with Dojo. I then received a phone call from EposNow to discuss the matter. But it turns out it was actually an aggressive sales call. I explained on 3 occasions that I wanted to keep my relationship with Dojo. After each explanation the person at the other end of the call just continued to try and sell me their card machine."

Ffion Roberts went further than most customers: she contacted Dojo directly to verify what she had been told, then published what she found. Her review states: "Dojo/Paymentsense confirm they were only informed about the loss of integration at the same time as customers." She added: "which tells you everything about how this was handled." She also notes that on a subsequent call, the EPOS Now representative "pinned the blame firmly on Paymentsense," the same company that had just confirmed it received no advance notice.

If you received this kind of communication, the document that matters now is your EPOS Now contract. Not the phone call. Not the follow-up email. The contract.

What your EPOS Now contract may contain

Before accepting any solution put forward by EPOS Now, check the contract for three specific things.

A non-integrated payment fee. EPOS Now has been adding a charge to accounts that do not use EPOS Now Payments. The fee has been referred to in communications as the "Non-Integrated Fee" and appears to be running at £89 per month per terminal plus VAT. One Trustpilot reviewer wrote: "because I don't have their payment system they now introduced a fee of £89.00 a month per terminal unless I change my payment provider to them." Another noted their bill going "from £48pm to £261" across two tills. This charge may not have been disclosed when you signed your original contract. Check both your current invoices and your original agreement.

Your notice period on the EPOS subscription. If you want to leave EPOS Now and take your business elsewhere, there is a contractual exit point and potentially an early termination charge. Know what those figures are before anyone pressures you into a rapid payment decision.

Hardware terms. Whether your EPOS Now terminals are purchased or rented determines what you can do with them and what it costs to stop. These terms vary significantly between accounts, and they change what your options actually look like.

None of this means you are trapped. It means you need the full picture before you commit to anything new.

Your options when the integration is gone

Businesses affected by the loss of the Dojo integration have three routes. None of them require taking EPOS Now's recommendation at face value.

Stay on EPOS Now, change payment provider. The platform retains integrations with other processors. The list has narrowed since the Dojo integration was withdrawn for many customers and other third-party integrations have also narrowed, so verify which providers are currently certified and what those integrations actually support before assuming this is the clean route.

Stay on Dojo, move EPOS provider. Dojo integrates with a range of other till systems. If your card processing arrangement with Dojo is working well, finding an EPOS provider that continues to support it may be the more straightforward option. The EPOS Now exit cost is the main variable.

Review both from scratch. You were using these two services because they worked together. With the integration removed, neither obligation is fixed. An independent look at both your EPOS requirements and your payment costs may surface a combination you had not previously considered, at better terms than you currently hold.

The right route depends on your transaction volume, your contract position, your hardware, and the rates available to you. It is not the same answer for every business.

What to ask before you sign anything

If someone is directing you toward a new payment arrangement following this change, get clear answers to these questions before you commit.

What is the full blended cost per transaction, including all scheme fees, gateway charges, and any minimum monthly charge? What is the notice period and the early termination charge on the new contract? Which EPOS systems does this payment provider integrate with, in case your till platform changes again?

For businesses that were Dojo customers before the change: ask Dojo for your current effective blended rate in writing before moving away. Use it as a benchmark. Headline rates from different providers are not calculated on the same basis, and a rate that looks lower can cost more once all the line items are counted.

The pattern this fits

EPOS Now is not the only software business that has moved in this direction. Across the UK payments market, the shift by EPOS and software companies into their own payment processing has been running for several years. The integrated model, where a third-party processor sits alongside a till system, is less profitable for the EPOS provider than owning both layers.

The result for businesses is a market where integrated software providers have a commercial reason to direct customers toward their own payment products, narrow the range of certified third-party integrations over time, and use the processing margin to reduce the headline price of the software.

That is a legitimate business strategy. Describing it as a partner withdrawal is something different.

The businesses best placed to handle this are the ones who know what their card processing actually costs, what their contracts actually say, and who has a commercial interest in the advice they are being given.