Your POS decision and your reservation decision are no longer independent.

In August 2026 Resy and Toast, and then Square and OpenTable, each announced a guest data integration.

Two announcements, eight days apart, two very similar moves.

On 13 August, Resy switched on its Digital Chits integration with Toast. Guest notes, visit history and preferences from the Resy guestbook now appear on Toast handhelds during service, and Resy says it is the only third-party reservation platform with a two way integration of this kind.

On 18 August, Square announced an expanded, preferred partnership with OpenTable. Reservation history and dining preferences from OpenTable join spend, order details and repeat visits from Square in one guest profile, live across the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland and France.

Two of the biggest restaurant POS companies have each wired themselves into a reservation marketplace at the guest data layer. Toast with Resy, owned by American Express, which folded Tock in last week. Square with OpenTable, owned by Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG). DoorDash skipped the partnership stage and bought SevenRooms outright.

For operators, this could be genuinely useful. Recognising a returning guest, seeing what a booking is actually worth, knowing the anniversary before the table is seated. Operators have wanted the diary and the till to talk to each other for years.

But let’s look at how it’s built. These aren’t open integrations any system can plug into. Square’s word is “preferred”. Resy’s word is “only”. Toast’s standard reservation integrations send data one way (their definition), out. The full two way connection is reserved for the chosen partner.

Which means your POS decision and your reservation decision are no longer independent. Run Toast with OpenTable, or Square with SevenRooms, and the new features aren’t available to you.

On Wednesday I wrote that selecting a reservation system has become a distribution decision. Now it’s also a guest data decision, made partly by the POS companies.

None of this costs you anything while you’re happy with the systems you run. These pairings may even work in your favour. The test comes when something changes. A price rise at renewal, an acquisition, a product heading somewhere you don’t want to follow. Leaving either system then means more than losing a tool. It means breaking the link between your bookings and your revenue data, and the price of leaving has gone up since you signed.

One question worth asking both your POS provider and your reservation provider at renewal: who is your preferred partner, and what happens to my guest data if I stop using them?