支付与互联网：DoorDash会进入餐厅POS领域吗？

Payments and Internet: Could DoorDash enter the RestaurantPOS game? For years now there has been speculation that DoorDash would enter the POS game withan offering called “Carte”.To be clear, this is NOT something DASH has ever stated, noris there new news.Butthe possibility makes for an interesting thought exercise,which is what this note is. Having debated it as a team, we think it’s plausible DASH tries.The company is ambitious, there is a valid strategic rationale, and DASH has been investingbehind its platform offering, recently acquiring SevenRooms (CRM system) and Symbiosys(retail media).However, POS is a difficult vertical to tackle due to stickiness and competition,so it could be an uphill battle. In this piece, we offer a cross-sector view of the opportunityand challenges if DASH decided to pursue this initiative - time will tell! Harshita Rawat, CFA+1 917 344 8485harshita.rawat@bernsteinsg.com Nikhil Devnani, CFA+1 917 344 8425nikhil.devnani@bernsteinsg.com Viola Chen+1 917 344 8614viola.chen@bernsteinsg.com Why would DASH enter the POS market?On team Internet, it’s not something wesee DASH doing unless there is a path to a differentiated offering. Bundling POS withexisting services, at a lower price point for merchants, could be the value add. While themargins on an emerging POS offering may be thin, it would: (1) open DASH up to entirelyincremental revenue (the company facilitates <10% of the restaurant market in the US, anddoesn’t see >90% of the transaction volume that occurs largely via dine-in); (2) the upliftin profitability vs. existing standalone margins could be substantial on a per-location basisand DASH could leverage existing distribution given its expansive restaurant base; and (3)in an Agentic Commerce world, being the platform/enabler of how restaurants come online(through any channel consumers decide to use) would reinforce the moat. Nathan Gee+1 917 344 8573nathan.gee@bernsteinsg.com Simran Ratani+1 917 344 8329simran.ratani@bernsteinsg.com Key hurdles and considerations.Despite our general bullishness and trust in DASHaround execution, we see three challenges to vertically integrating in POS: (1) DASH workswith a broad set of POS partners today and competing directly with these platforms couldjeopardize those relationships and push these companies to integrate deeper with UBER;(2) POS systems are sticky and inconvenient to replace; and (3) restaurants may want toretain a POS system that is independent to avoid over-reliance on one entity. Where do we shake out?From a Payments point of view, overall, we currently see limitedrisk to Toast/XYZ/FISV (an uphill battle). POS is mission-critical and replacing systems ishard. POS is also an extremely competitive and sales-intensive business. There is then thehardware and support requirements. Toast’s best-in-class ~$10K gross profit/location(half of which is payments and the other half is software & working capital) is no easy featand relies on upselling a full breadth of software including payroll, etc. It is telling that peerssuch as Square and Clover have significantly lower software revenue attach rates. A long-term risk we will monitor is any price-based competition. From an Internet standpoint, we don’t think investment alone deters DASH. We estimate anincremental $50-75M of investment this year behind software solutions already. This is nota slam dunk, as the stickiness of POS is a real hurdle to success. But, we have seen DASHrun at hard problems repeatedly and show an openness to M&A where additive to organicefforts. Strategically, we wonder if the fallout risk of competing with its existing partnernetwork would be the bigger factor that prevents any of this from materializing. Wedo nothave POS built into our model for DASH, so this is optionality. INVESTMENT IMPLICATIONS Payments:We rate Toast and Block OP. We rate FI and GPN MP. See our recent upgrade of Toast - Toast: An AI winner, NOT aloser; upgrading to OP (February 2026). Right now, we don’t think there’s much to be concerned about from a Toast point of view as POS is an uphill battle. Longer-term,a risk to watch may be price-based competition introduced by DoorDash (in an effort to gain market share). However, we believeit will be hard for DoorDash to gain market share in a highly competitive POS market, where restaurants need a lot of sales andmarketing resources to onboard and support. There is then the specialized hardware. Distribution is key but not everything (e.g.,Toast is bigger than Clover on restaurants). Payments processing is also mission-critical for restaurants, and it is unclear why arestaurant would switch (and not simply negotiate better price with existing vendor) unless the value proposition (e.g., Toast isusually a superior product and that drives its gains) and/or price cuts offered by a new player are deep. Restaurants often have a mixed relationship with their delivery providers but often love Toast. With >20% market share of theSMB