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Yuno has raised $45 million in a Series B round led by Global PayTech Ventures, per PYMNTS on August 12. The company will use the money for research and development, next-generation payments technology and expansion of its global infrastructure. Its product plans include extending the platform to in-person payments, deepening agentic commerce capabilities and scaling its United States presence.
For vendors selling into UK hospitality, the in-person move is the signal. Yuno currently connects businesses through a single API to more than 1,000 payment methods, with 460 integrations across 190 countries. Over the past year it added 150 new integrations. That is an ecommerce and digital-first footprint. Moving into in-person payments puts it directly into the territory of POS providers and payment terminals already installed across UK restaurants, pubs and hotels.
Yuno launched AI agents called Nova in September. Nova localises conversations across more than 70 languages. Co-founder and CEO Juan Pablo Ortega framed the competitive position bluntly: "Being local everywhere is the hardest problem in payments, and anyone starting on it today is at least two years behind. With this round we intend to consolidate that leadership on a truly global scale, with real financial discipline."
The threat to incumbent UK payment vendors is not immediate displacement. It is pricing pressure and feature expectations. A platform that can offer localised payment methods across 190 countries changes what a multi-site hospitality group expects from its payments stack. Vendors whose pitch is built on UK-only coverage will face harder questions when groups with international ambitions evaluate their options.
me&u Enters Reservations With an All-in-One Stack
Australian hospitality technology company me&u has launched me&u Reservations, a product combining bookings management, voice AI and functions management into a single platform. The company processes more than one million orders a week across more than 6,000 venues in Australia, the UK and the United States, and holds 28 million guest profiles.
Founder and CEO Kim Teo positioned the product against fragmented legacy systems. "We built me&u Reservations to simplify and consolidate three separate products into one - a world first for the industry," she said. The pitch is that a typical hospitality operator works with five to seven technology partners, and that fragmentation breaks the guest experience. Teo gave a concrete example: a guest who hosted an engagement party at a venue could return three months later and appear in the system as a first-time visitor.
The product is already operational at Aria, the Sydney fine-dining restaurant owned by Solotel. Solotel CEO Elliot Solomon said the rollout took six months from initial discussions. "We basically co-designed the product - if we wanted something in the product, the team would say it's going to be built in a day, or built in a week," he said.
For UK vendors, this is a displacement story. me&u already has UK venues in its order-processing base. A reservations product that consolidates bookings, events and guest data into one system competes directly with incumbent UK booking platforms. The consolidation argument also creates an opening for POS and data vendors: if a group moves to me&u Reservations, adjacent systems that do not integrate cleanly become re-tender targets.
The wider market context matters. DoorDash paid more than US$1 billion to acquire SevenRooms. American Express owns both Resy and Tock and is acquiring The Fork for US$700 million. OpenTable has partnered with Uber to enable in-app restaurant reservations through Uber Eats' "Dine Out" feature. Teo's read on this consolidation: "The incumbents being snapped up by financial services companies and delivery giants presents an opportunity for us - the business models of these companies thrive off consumer loyalty of card holders or delivery services users."
The Coconut Tree Opens Its First Post-Administration Site
The Coconut Tree, the Sri Lankan restaurant group rescued from administration last year, opens a new Bristol branch at 5pm on August 28. It is the second outlet in the city for the group, on Broad Quay, and the first since founders Praveen Thangiah and Shamil Fernando took control through their company MPS Hospitality.
The group appointed administrators from Mazars last November after failing to keep up with payments on a Company Voluntary Arrangement. The tipping point came when the business defaulted on a £1.6 million tax bill. The MPS Hospitality deal saved more than 150 jobs, and no suppliers, employees or local business partners were left out of pocket.
The new site will sell Sri Lankan dishes and original cocktails, with outside dining for more than 50 people and three virtual darts lanes inside. Thangiah said the focus is "on creating a more sustainable business for the future" and thanked the team as the group opens its seventh site.
For vendors, this is a cautious expansion signal. A group emerging from administration and opening its first new site under new ownership is a buying window, but a narrow one. The founders are focused on sustainability, not aggressive rollout. POS, payments and workforce tech vendors should treat this as a single-site opportunity with a group that has proven it will cut costs hard when cash tightens. The existing estate spans Cheltenham, Bath, Bournemouth, Oxford, Reading and Gloucester Road in Bristol.
Sri Lankan Brand Isso Prawn Crazy Lands in Canary Wharf
Isso Prawn Crazy has opened its first international restaurant at 25 Cabot Square in London's Canary Wharf. The 90-seat site opened on 29 June and is the company's first location outside Sri Lanka, where it operates five sites after starting as a 16-seat restaurant in central Colombo in 2016.
The Canary Wharf location includes a private dining room for up to 12 people, with further outside terrace space planned. Notably for vendors, the company has introduced kitchen automation at the site, including robotic wok technology. Executive Chef Karan Kashyap leads the kitchen.
The supply chain is a differentiator: Isso sources prawns directly from Sri Lanka, working with more than 150 small-boat fishermen, with seafood frozen shortly after harvesting before export to the UK.
For vendors, this is a new high-profile account already investing in automation. A brand that installs robotic wok technology at its first international site is signalling willingness to spend on operational tech. Early engagement on POS, payments and workforce systems has a realistic chance of becoming the group's UK standard as it evaluates further expansion.
Mobile Payments Hit Half of UK Adults
Almost two-thirds of hospitality providers, 63%, have reported increased use of mobile and app payments among their customers, according to research from Lolly published on 12 August. Half of all UK adults now regularly use mobile payments such as Apple Pay or Google Pay at least once a month, up from 34% in 2023.
Peter Moore, CEO of It's Lolly, said the shift is not about technology for its own sake. "Operators recognise that apps and mobile solutions must enhance and not replace core hospitality values like personal service and guest experience," he said. "Whether through contactless dining, loyalty rewards, or personalised mobile ordering, apps are becoming tools that allow teams to focus more on high-value interactions while the systems handle the routine service flows."
For vendors, the 34% to 50% jump in two years is the number to carry into sales conversations. Any pitch that treats mobile payments as a future trend is already dated. The question for operators is no longer whether to accept mobile payments but which systems handle them with the least friction and the best data capture. Vendors selling POS, payments or loyalty tech that cannot demonstrate clean mobile integration are now selling against the baseline, not ahead of it.
A note on Peach Data
When published benchmarks run out, verified contact data closes the gap. Peach Data provides TPS/CTPS-screened contact records across thousands of UK hospitality venues, so vendors can reach the right decision-makers as these stories unfold. peachdata.co.uk