Toast, the restaurant software and payments firm, hinted Tuesday that it may have a checkout-free payment concept for diners in the offing.
The new payment effort Toast is “looking at” would be tied to the company’s reservation and waitlist tool, Toast CEO Aman Narang said on a conference call with analysts, responding to a question about how the company could leverage insights from its growing network of 156,000 restaurants.
“Imagine an ability to just walk out and leave at the end of the transaction, because you’ve got a card on file,” Narang said. “There’s a huge opportunity there in terms of providing a better guest experience, both in terms of bringing diners into the restaurant and then leaving the restaurant as well.”
Toast did not respond to an email Wednesday seeking additional details on the status of the payment effort or whether it has tested the concept.
For merchants, the checkout-free payment experience has been an attractive though elusive goal for many years as Amazon, Cantaloupe and others have explored frictionless “just walk out” experiences. Retailers including sports stadiums and airport shops have introduced checkout-free systems in recent years.
Boston-based Toast, which was founded in 2012, reported net income of $105 million for the third quarter, nearly double the $56 million for the period a year ago. Revenue rose 25% of $1.63 billion from the same period of 2024.
Toast competes heavily in hospitality software and payments services with Block-owned Square, Fiserv’s Clover and Montreal-based Lightspeed Commerce.
Toast added 7,500 new locations to its client roster during the quarter, to a total of about 156,000, and announced deals with the casual dining chain TGI Friday’s and Nordstrom, the upscale department store operator, which has about 200 dining locations at its retail outlets.
The company also said its annualized recurring run rate, a measure of subscription and payment services revenue, rose 30% to top $2 billion in the quarter for the first time. Toast’s ARR stood at about $1.6 billion a year ago.
Narang said the company has “a clear path” to double its market share and is targeting $10 billion in ARR. After taking a decade to reach $1 billion of ARR, Toast has seen that figure double over the past two years, Narang said.
“Our management team wakes up every day with the mindset of getting to $10 billion in ARR over the next decade,” Chief Financial Officer Elena Gomez said in her remarks on the conference call.
To further its market growth, Toast will “invest heavily in ongoing expansion, which is expected to keep adjusted [profit] margins flattish in 2026,” Baird Equity Research analysts wrote Tuesday in a client note.
