A comprehensive overview of domestic tipping: this is how Hungarians tip, according to restaurateurs

Thanks to changes in legislation, tips given with a bank card will become tax- and contribution-free for an even wider range of people from January 2025 – this could significantly encourage digital tipping. Based on HelloPay’s research on tipping practices among caterers, 42 percent of caterers found that consumers are more willing to tip if they can do so easily with a bank card.

Places using the HelloPay Direct Tipping system reported even more encouraging results: nearly 70 percent of them said that such solutions make guests even more motivated to tip. In the case of restaurants, for example, 49 percent of guests say themselves how much they would like to add to the total – digitally. In entertainment venues, it is more typical for them to enter the amount on the terminal.

“The legislative amendment was received positively by the market, as it made the institution of digital tipping more widely available, but at the same time it also indirectly imposed a task on the actors,”

– said Norbert Varga, CEO of HelloPay.

Tip administration represents a new challenge in most places: according to the law, it is necessary to keep records of the employees working in a given shift, as well as the amount of the tip paid, if it was not directly credited to the employee’s account. However, the change is not new for those who have used innovative payment systems before.

“Our HelloPay Direct Tipping solution has been enabling the guest to transfer tips directly to the server’s account using their bank card for years – completely tax and contribution-free, legally compliant, and without any administrative tasks,”

said Norbert Varga, CEO of HelloPay.