Your clients book on their phone. They follow you on Instagram. They pay for their coffee with a watch tap on the way to their appointment. By the time they’re sitting in your chair, they’ve already formed an impression of your salon.
The checkout is the last thing they experience before they walk out the door. It should feel as effortless as everything else.
Here’s what clients expect when they pay in 2025 – and what it means for your business.
The shift since 2020
COVID changed how people think about payment. Contactless went from a convenience to a default almost overnight. Now, several years on, it’s not just tap-to-pay that clients expect. It’s tap-with-any-device – phone, watch, ring. It’s the ability to split a bill without shuffling cash. It’s the option to pay for a big-ticket service in instalments without going to a bank.
If your terminal can’t handle these expectations, you’re creating friction at the worst possible moment.
What ‘contactless’ actually means now
Contactless used to mean tapping your card. Now it means:
- Tapping your phone (Apple Pay, Google Pay)
- Tapping your watch or wearable
- Scanning a QR code
- Paying with a digital wallet stored in your phone
Clients – especially younger ones – often don’t carry a physical card at all. If your terminal only accepts chip and pin, you’re asking them to do something that feels genuinely unusual to them.
A modern terminal accepts all of it. Tap, insert, swipe, phone, watch – whatever the client prefers.
Why buy now, pay later matters for salons
Afterpay and ZipPay aren’t just for retail. They’ve become a genuinely popular option for higher-value salon services – colour treatments, extensions, packages, special occasion bookings.
For a client spending $350 on a full colour and cut, the option to split that into four fortnightly payments makes the decision easier. It doesn’t mean they can’t afford it. It means they prefer to manage their cash flow that way – and millions of New Zealanders and Australians do.
Offering BNPL can increase your average spend per visit. It removes the hesitation that sometimes stops a client from booking the service they actually want.
The checkout as a client experience moment
Here’s a shift worth making: stop thinking about checkout as admin and start thinking about it as the last moment of the client experience.
A great checkout should:
- Be fast – no one wants to wait while a terminal connects
- Be familiar – the same payment options they use everywhere else
- Be smooth – no double entry, no awkward pauses while your team figures out the total
- Leave a good impression – a clean, professional end to a great service
When it works well, clients don’t notice it. That’s exactly the goal.
What an integrated checkout actually looks like
When your terminal is connected to your booking software, the service total flows through automatically. Your team doesn’t enter amounts manually. There’s no risk of a discrepancy. The client taps, the receipt is sent, the transaction is recorded. Done.
That’s Kitomba Pay. One system, every payment type, completely integrated with the rest of your Kitomba software.
It accepts credit and debit cards, EFTPOS, Afterpay, ZipPay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. And it all runs at one flat rate, so you always know what you’re paying.
Your clients are used to a certain standard when they pay. They expect it to be fast, easy, and flexible. Meeting that expectation isn’t a premium feature – it’s the baseline.
The good news is that getting there is simpler than it sounds.