techformerchant.eu Made by AI· updated 23 Sep 2026
Home›Methodology
How the ranking is made

Methodology

Why this site exists, what counts as European, how the criteria are scored, why innovation weighs more, where the information comes from, and what the AI does and does not decide.

How this site is made

techformerchant.eu is written and maintained entirely by artificial intelligence: Claude, the model developed by Anthropic. It reads customer reviews, other comparators, trade-association guides, company registers and the monthly news, extracts the facts, drafts every page and gives every score against the written rubric below. The site is published by ByCM Management SRL (Namur) under the editorial responsibility of Camille POTVIN, who validates the eligibility of every listed company, arbitrates corrections and signs off each monthly refresh. Nothing on the site is written by a vendor.

The site updates itself. Every month the whole market is re-read, new solutions are added and the month's news is read; when an item concerns a listed company, its page is regenerated from the new sources. Each page shows the date it was last reviewed.

Why TechForMerchant exists

A restaurant or a shop runs on a dozen tools it did not choose freely. They came with the bank, with the franchisor, with the first search result, or with a comparator whose ranking is paid for by the vendors it ranks. TechForMerchant exists to give merchants a comparison that is on their side: independent, complete, current, and limited to the European Union.

Limited to the Union because that is where a merchant's rules come from: GDPR, fiscal certification, e-invoicing, labour law. A vendor headquartered in the EU builds them in and answers in your language; the data stays under EU law; the licence fees pay for jobs and the next innovation on this continent. Choosing European is not a sentiment, it is the option that fits the counter. It is also a lever: the European project is strengthened when Europe's merchants encourage the EU market and buy from it.

Independent and complete because the comparison is made entirely by AI, from public sources, with the same rubric for everyone, and refreshed every month. That is how a two-person company with a real idea, invisible to search engines and absent from sponsored comparators, ends up next to the market leader, and how a merchant hears about it before the vendor's marketing budget exists.

What counts as European

TechForMerchant compares solutions built for physical merchants: restaurants, shops, cafés, hotels, salons and other businesses with a counter. Tools aimed only at online-only businesses are out of scope.

A solution is listed when the company that publishes it has both its registered seat and its operational headquarters in one of the 27 member states of the European Union. That is the only entry criterion. Companies headquartered in the United Kingdom, Switzerland or Norway are not listed, however close they are to the EU market: the guide answers one question, "which tools are run from inside the Union", and a wider definition would blur the answer.

Ownership is disclosed, not judged. Several eligible companies belong to non-EU groups (TheFork Manager to Tripadvisor, Planday to Xero, Wolt to DoorDash, Holded to Visma). They stay listed because they are still run from an EU headquarters, and the parent is shown with a visible flag on the page, so that a reader who cares about ownership can decide for themselves.

Two axes: value and market penetration

A big vendor is not necessarily a good deal, and a good deal is not necessarily a big vendor. The guide therefore keeps two axes apart. The value score ranks the solutions on what they are worth to the merchant who adopts them. The market penetration score says how far the market has already gone with them. Both are shown on every card; only the first decides the ranking.

Value score (the ranking)

Value score = (deployment + ease of use + 2 × innovation + price and terms) ÷ 5, shown to one decimal. Within a category, ties are broken by the innovation score.

Market penetration (shown, not ranked)

Market penetration = (adoption + integration) ÷ 2. It is the reader's measure of risk and of fit with an existing stack; it is deliberately kept out of the ranking so that a small vendor with a better product is not pushed below a large one with a weaker product.

Established and rising

Both appear in the same ranking, labelled. Established solutions were founded before 2018 or hold a clear leading position in at least one country. Rising solutions were founded in 2018 or later, or remain small but bring a distinctive approach. The label is not a judgement of quality; it tells the reader what kind of bet they are making. An established vendor is unlikely to disappear but may move slowly; a rising vendor may be exactly what the market lacked, or may not exist in three years. Every page states the reason for the label in one sentence.

Under the radar

A guide that only listed the vendors with the biggest marketing budgets would miss where the market is going. The guide therefore deliberately includes early-stage and bootstrapped companies, often with little or no outside funding, when their concept is genuinely new: a new interaction at the counter, a new business model, AI applied to a job that used to be manual. They are marked “under the radar”. By construction their adoption score is low (4 or less), which keeps them out of the top of most rankings; the innovation score and the “what is new here” note are where they shine, and the Innovation page lets you list them on their own. A merchant choosing one of them is taking a bet, and the page says so.

Sources

Four kinds of sources feed the scores, and each page lists the ones actually consulted.

What the AI does

The model reads the sources above at a scale no editorial team could match, extracts facts (headquarters, founding year, entry price, last funding round, countries served, certifications), drafts the neutral description, the strengths and the limits, and gives the scores against the written rubric. Eligibility is checked against the company register or the legal notice on the vendor's site.

When a price or a funding figure cannot be verified from a public source, the page says "on quote" or "not disclosed" rather than showing a number.

Independence

Placement in the rankings is never sold. Vendors cannot pay to be listed, moved up or described differently, and there is no sponsored content. When facts on a page come from the vendor itself (pricing, references), they are marked as such on that page.