Specialised payment infrastructure for the food and hospitality sectors has become one of the more interesting niches in European fintech — a category where vertical depth in a specific industry beats horizontal scale across many. AidePay was founded in Paris in 2018 to serve the French restaurant and food service market with payment solutions designed for the specific operational realities of the sector. Restaurant payments have particular requirements — table-side payment terminals, integrated tip handling, split bill functionality, integration with point-of-sale systems that range from modern cloud platforms to ancient legacy systems still running across French restaurants. AidePay built its product around those specific needs rather than adapting general-purpose payment terminals to a hospitality context. The company has expanded across the French market and into adjacent verticals where similar dynamics apply. In the French payments landscape, where SumUp and traditional bank acquirers compete for general SME merchants, AidePay's vertical focus on food service and hospitality represents a different competitive strategy — building product depth in one industry rather than feature breadth across many.