EFTPOS vs POS: What Is the Difference?

The short answer: EFTPOS is how your customer pays — Australia’s electronic payment system, running through the card terminal on your counter. A POS (point of sale) is how your business sells — the system that takes the order, prices it, sends it to the kitchen or fulfils it, tracks the stock and reports the day. The terminal moves money; the POS runs the operation. Most venues need both, and the real decision is whether they talk to each other.

What EFTPOS actually is

EFTPOS stands for Electronic Funds Transfer at Point of Sale. In Australia it is both a generic word for card terminals and the name of the domestic debit network (run today by Australian Payments Plus). When a customer taps a debit card, the transaction can travel through the international schemes or through the eftpos network — and which path it takes changes what the transaction costs you. That’s why least-cost routing matters: it sends eligible taps down the cheaper path, and it becomes more important from 1 October 2026, when surcharging eftpos transactions is banned and card costs come out of your margin rather than the customer’s.

Your EFTPOS terminal comes from a payment provider — a bank, or a specialist like Tyro, ANZ Worldline or Nuvei — under a merchant agreement that sets your rates.

What a POS actually is

The POS is the system your staff work in all day. In a cafe or restaurant it takes orders at the counter, table or via QR code, prints kitchen dockets, handles modifiers and split bills, and counts stock down as items sell. In retail it scans barcodes, manages the product file and reorders. Either way it produces the numbers you run the business on: sales by hour, best sellers, staff performance, end-of-day totals.

A POS without payments still sells — you’d just key every card amount into a separate terminal by hand. An EFTPOS terminal without a POS still takes money — you’d just run the business on paper.

Integrated vs standalone: the difference that matters

Because most venues need both, the real question is whether they’re connected:

• Standalone: staff ring up the sale on the POS, then type the same amount into the terminal. Every card sale involves a re-keyed number — and re-keyed numbers are where mis-charges, disputes and end-of-day discrepancies come from.
• Integrated: the POS sends the total to the terminal automatically. Nothing is typed twice, the payment reconciles against the sale on its own, and each card transaction is a few seconds faster — which compounds across a Friday-night service.

Integration is also what makes one set of numbers possible: counter sales, online orders and QR payments all landing in the same reports instead of three systems that have to be matched by hand.

Do you have to buy them from the same company?

No — and in Australia you generally shouldn’t have to. A well-integrated POS works with the payment provider you choose. Pratham POS integrates with 18+ Australian providers including Tyro, ANZ Worldline and Nuvei, so most businesses keep their existing merchant agreement and rates when they change POS. Be wary of systems that only process payments through their own service, or charge extra for using anyone else’s — that’s a lock-in dressed up as a bundle.

Quick comparison

The bottom line

Don’t choose between EFTPOS and POS — they answer different questions. Choose a POS that integrates with the Australian payment providers you’d actually use, so the two work as one system. That’s the setup that removes re-keying errors, reconciles itself at close, and keeps your provider options open when rates change. See how Pratham POS integrates with Australian EFTPOS providers, or book a free demo to watch an integrated sale go through end to end.