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Revolut is introducing face biometrics for retail payment authentication aimed at UK hospitality businesses, with 0 percent processing fees for merchants, per Biometric Update on September 25. The new Pay with Smile service provides in-store checkout with facial recognition as a feature of Revolut Register, a hospitality-centric point-of-sale terminal. An initial pilot has launched exclusively at Kiss the Hippo cafes across the UK, ahead of a potential rollout across all 12 locations later this year.
For vendors selling POS and payments into hospitality, this is a direct competitive threat on price. UK merchants pay £875 per month on average for payments processing and infrastructure, and more in hospitality. A 0 percent processing fee offer resets the conversation operators will have with their incumbent providers, whether or not Revolut's pilot scales.
What Revolut Register actually does
Revolut Register comes with a backup eSIM to maintain connectivity during network failures. That detail matters because more than half of people in Britain have experienced checkout friction in the form of payment delays and failures from dropped merchant internet signals, per Biometric Update. Pay with Smile provides bank grade security with end-to-end encryption. Customers enroll their selfie biometrics with Revolut through its mobile app.
Alex Codina, Revolut Business General Manager of Merchant Payments, framed the move as a full-stack play. "To solve this, we're deploying Revolut's full technological ecosystem to reinvent the mechanics of the hospitality industry and give consumers the payments experience they deserve. By combining high-performance processing with facial recognition technology, we'll replace outdated, fragmented tills with a hyper-efficient checkout experience designed to solve consumer and merchant pain points."
Alex Damgaci, Kiss the Hippo Managing Director, gave the operator's view. "In hospitality, a seamless checkout is no longer a luxury, it's the bare minimum. Technology that takes the friction out of the payment process and offers payment flexibility gives operators the reliability they need to protect revenue and maintain guest satisfaction."
Whitbread's restaurant exit closes 106 Beefeaters
Whitbread closed 106 Beefeater restaurants during September as part of a move away from standalone restaurant chains towards an integrated food and beverage offer, per the Daily Express. Sister chain Brewers Fayre had 89 closures listed for September. Bar + Block closed all 20 of its UK locations on September 3. Table Table closed more than 30 branches during September, all on September 3. Cookhouse + Pub closed all 14 of its UK branches in September.
The scale is significant for territory planning. A vendor with Beefeater, Brewers Fayre, Bar + Block, Table Table or Cookhouse + Pub sites in their book is now looking at churn across hundreds of locations in a single month. The remaining Whitbread estate consolidates around Premier Inn's integrated food offer, which means fewer standalone restaurant buying points and a different procurement conversation.
A Wetherspoon opens in a former Beefeater
The Cranbourne Hundred opens at 7am on Tuesday, September 29 on Ringwood Road, Ferndown, per Yahoo News UK. The refurbishment cost more than £1 million and created 50 jobs. The pub is Wetherspoon's only thatched pub in the UK, and it was formerly a Beefeater restaurant. Manager Rob Stephens joined from The King's Head Inn in Salisbury after 18 years with the company.
The detail worth noting is the conversion itself. A Whitbread Beefeater site became a Wetherspoon pub. That is the churn cycle in one building: one national operator's tech stack out, another's in. For vendors, every conversion like this is a re-tender event for POS, payments, workforce and supply systems.
TG Jones closes 19 shops in September
TG Jones, formerly WH Smith, has confirmed plans to close 150 shops as part of a restructuring programme, per the Daily Express. Nineteen locations were set for closure in September 2026, with 11 already shut and further branches scheduled to close before the end of September. Closures spanned Bath, Redcar, Redhill, Market Harborough, Uckfield, Cambridge, Swindon, Helston, Deal, Basildon, Rustington, Clevedon, Greenford, Kenilworth, Southend-on-Sea, Exmouth and Frome. Two further locations, Cardigan in Wales and Wells in Somerset, had unconfirmed closure dates.
TG Jones is retail rather than hospitality, but the pattern matters for vendors with mixed books. Restructuring programmes of this scale reallocate territory and concentrate buying power in remaining sites. The same logic applies to the five Premier Foreways shops that closed in Carlisle, Cumbria, ending a chain that operated under the Premier group for almost 40 years.
Administrations hit holiday parks and a homeware brand
Cove Communities Venture 2 Medmerry OpCo Limited, the company behind Medmerry Holiday Park in West Sussex, has entered administration, per the Daily Express. The 100-acre holiday village was home to 308 self-catering chalets as well as a large outdoor swimming pool and a central pub and restaurant. The park has been closed since 2024 after suffering flooding and will not reopen. Other subsidiaries linked to the group have also entered administration, including businesses behind the eight-park Argyll Holidays portfolio in Scotland. Gwel an Mor Resort in Cornwall and Solway Holiday Park in the Lake District have also been affected, though those parks remain open and operational while administrators seek buyers.
For vendors selling into holiday parks, the open-and-operational parks are the live opportunity. Administrators seeking buyers means a sale process, and a sale process means new ownership, new procurement and often a full tech review. Designers Guild Limited has also entered administration and ceased trading completely, with 93 jobs at risk.
A note on Peach Data
When published benchmarks run out, the work is knowing which sites are actually open, who runs them and who holds the buying authority. Peach Data provides verified, TPS-screened contact data across thousands of UK hospitality venues. peachdata.co.uk