New Tipping App Helps Staff Earn More Tips and Get Paid Faster, Helping Employers Mitigate National Insurance
By Dominic Sow · 31 March 2025
Hospitality, service staff, gig workers and musicians can now earn more tips, get paid faster and straight into their account with a revolutionary new tipping app called thankyü which allows tips to be tapped by a customer’s phone via a wearable tipping band called the TipTap.
It comes as hospitality businesses face a triple whammy on April 1 of National Insurance for employers increasing to 15%, Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Business Rates Relief being reduced from 75% to 40% and the National Minimum Wage increasing to £12.21 an hour.
The National Insurance increase alone means a café earning £20,000 in tips a year may have to pay NIC of £3,000.
But British Fintech-for-good start-up thankyü has developed the first decentralised peer-to-peer tipping platform, powered by payments tech pioneer Viva.com and Mastercard Move.
It means staff can receive and manage their tips quicker, employees don’t have to pay tax or NIC at source and employers don’t have to pay National Insurance on them.
It also provides a downloadable financial record of tips to help hospitality and service staff fill in self-assessment forms and use as a credit reference to help them secure a loan or a mortgage.
The thankyü app can be downloaded for free in app stores now.
The thankyü system has been trialled in Hull’s Nibble café to help waiting staff collect tips electronically and the Polar Bear Music Club in Hull, where gig-goers can ‘tap-to-tip’ performing musicians after their sets. It’s available to download and use for free in the app store now.
thankyü was designed to help employees and employers following Government legislation that came into force last October. The Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023, also known as the Tipping Act, requires employers to all share tips, gratuities, and service charges fairly and transparently with their employees. The Government claim it will see an extra £200 million back in the pocket of workers.
Before the act, tips were often collected centrally when the bill arrived and then distributed up to 60 days later by the employer, sometimes with very little transparency or a fair representation of the service provided.
The thankyü app allows tips to be collected by hospitality and service staff and keep them in their own personal wallet and, if they wish, share them with fellow employees, family or friends or transfer them to their own bank account.
thankyü, which is part of Hull’s burgeoning tech sector, developed an NFC (Near-Field Communication) wearable called the ‘TipTap’ band which allows customers to tip by tapping the band with their phone, taking them straight to the individual tipping account for the employee serving them. Tips can also be received using an in-app QR code.
Customers enter the amount they’d like to give, provide a star rating and then the tip is sent into their thankyü personal wallet in the app and settled into their bank account every Tuesday, or sooner if they want.
Payments are managed by Viva.com, powered by Mastercard Move’s money movement capabilities.
Employees with the thankyü app can also enter a free weekly prize draw in the app to earn £50 to top up their account. This is part of thankyü’s commitment to supporting these workers.
thankyü is simple to use. Employees download the app for free from the Apple and Google Play stores, set up the account and they’re good to go, and employers have access to the free employer dashboard.
The first 1,000 people to download and register will receive a TipTap band for free or alternatively they can use a personalised in-app QR code to collect tips.
There are two options for staff:
- a free pay-as-you-go system called thankyü Now where staff pay 5% of each tip transaction.
- an all-inclusive version called thankyü Freedom where for the equivalent cost of a tip per month, staff get cashback on their platform charges, a free TipTap band and a free tastecard offering 2-4-1 meals, 50% off food or 25% off food and drinks at thousands of participating UK restaurants and take aways such as Prezzo, Pizza Express, Zizzi, Burger King and Dominos, worth £79.99 a year.
thankyü founder Gerard Toplass, a successful technology entrepreneur with 20 years’ experience in building technology and services businesses, said he was driven to develop the platform to give hospitality service staff and musicians a better deal and the respect they deserve.
He said: “This is a tough time for the hospitality and service industry. Rising National Insurance and reduced business rates relief will make it harder for businesses and an increasingly cashless society means there’s less money for physical tips that go straight to staff, which can account for 40% of their income.
“But surveys show over 80% of customers want to tip using their cards or integrated wallets but want to make sure the person serving them actually gets the tip.
“That’s why we created thankyü. We want to ensure staff have the ability to keep up to 100% of their tips so they can earn more money and get paid faster. We want to treat hospitality and service staff as the key workers they are.
“thankyü will allow staff to share their tips with co-workers, bandmates, family or friends and choose how they spend or save. We’ve even introduced a free weekly prize draw that will help to top up their tips.
“For employers, thankyü is safe and secure and compliant with HMRC and the Tipping Act. It reduces the administrative burden of managing cash tips, will help staff recruitment and retention and saves them paying National Insurance as the tips go straight to the server.
“thankyü will ensure staff finally get the credit they deserve for their excellent service.”
Anna Lamb, founder and owner of the Nibble Café in Hull, who are using thankyü said:
“I started Nibble in 2016 to serve nearby office staff for breakfast and brunch but we've now doubled in size. We've got an outside area as well and some great customers.
“But on April 1st we face an increase of National Insurance to 15% and that’s going to be hard for us.
“Currently we take tips through the handheld PDQ machine and people can add a percentage or a custom amount. We then add that up every day and like collectively add it up at the end of the week, which is then declared through payroll and it goes into the wages.
“But we have to pay National Insurance on those tips so with the NI rise, if we collect £20,000 in tips over the year, I’ll have to deduct £3,000 from the tips.
“I’ve always wanted a system where we could cut out the middleman so the staff could get the tips directly without NI being taken off and thankyü seems to be the answer.
“What I love is that it's just direct. The staff can manage their own app. For me, it's less admin time because at the moment, we're manually having to add things up in the day, add it up at the end of the week. Whereas thankyü just does everything for you.
“I think the TipTap band is really fantastic and convenient. It’s a great incentive for staff to continue to deliver excellent service.
“A lot of people don't always have cash on them so this is a nice and really fast way of saying thank you to your server”
Rose Barker, director of the Polar Bear Music Club and musician in Hull band O’Phantom said: “The Polar Bear is a music club and bar in Hull. It was owned by a national company just before Covid in 2020. It closed down during the pandemic and then a group of us brought it back through crowdfunding and through the generous donations of people in Hull.
“We're in one of the most deprived areas in the country so we have this ethos that music should be free for everybody and that's something that we really try and strive for every day.
“So having a donation bucket is just one of the ways that we try and offset those rising costs because we want to keep it free for everyone. But not a lot of people have physical cash these days.
“thankyü is perfect for us as we can offer it to the bar staff to earn more tips and for musicians to get more donations. There's lots of red tape around tipping through businesses, so having something that’s simpler really works for us.”
“We’ve set up a TipTap band on our seven-foot Polar Bear Steve so if people like the band they’ve seen, they can go tip the bear and we can send the money on to the musicians.
“Having the tipping band on the bear is going to really encourage people to give us more tips. He's already a main feature of the venue and people love to take photos with him. So having an extra way of interacting with him is only going to attract more people to help us out.” Companies in this story: thankyü
People in this story: Anna Lamb, Gerard Toplass