Block's Square prices its AI kiosk at $1,999 plus $99 a month as Toast falls 3.37%

A kiosk with three price tags

Square, the point-of-sale and payments brand of Block▼−2.38% — Block, down 2.38 percent today (NYSE: XYZ), began selling Square Kiosk on October 14, 2026↗: a 21.5-inch terminal for quick-service restaurants whose voice layer reads a seller's full menu, answers questions and takes the order by speech ¹². The device carries a published price list↗: $1,999 for the hardware, $99 per device each month for software, and a required Square Plus plan at $49 per location per month, or Premium at $149 ¹. Card fees of 2.5 percent plus 15 cents sit on every tap or dip ³.

Square also shipped multi-account tools that let franchise operators manage menus, reporting and gift cards across whole networks ¹. Toast▼−3.53% — Toast, down 3.53 percent today (NYSE: TOST), the restaurant software and payments platform, fell more than 4.5 percent in midday trading and closed down 3.37 percent, taking its 2026 decline to 17 percent; Block slipped 1.31 percent ⁴.

Two ways to bill one restaurant

Toast sells hardware at a loss and earns on the money moving through it; the new kiosk instead charges for the terminal, the software and the swipe.

Toast's second-quarter filing↗ shows the split: hardware and services lost $68 million at the gross line, while financial technology, mostly payments, delivered $1.57 billion of its $1.908 billion revenue ⁵.

Toast's public pricing↗ quotes restaurant plans at $0 and $69 a month and lists no kiosk on the page; hardware arrives as kits and add-ons ⁶. Square just published the per-device number instead.

The incumbent enters at speed

Toast's second quarter, reported August 4, showed no crack ⁵. Revenue rose 23 percent to $1.908 billion, net income rose 93 percent to $154 million, and gross payment volume, the dollars run through its platform, grew 22 percent to $60.7 billion ⁴⁵.

Toast added a record 9,500 net locations to reach roughly 180,000, and raised its full-year outlook for adjusted EBITDA, a profit measure that excludes items such as stock-based compensation, depreciation and taxes, to a range of $805 million to $825 million ⁵. The fight is mutual: on April 14, Toast launched Toast Drive-Thru with AI voice-ordering partners↗, aimed at chains of 15 or more locations ⁸.

One device against 180,000 counters

The kiosk ships in English only, in the United States only ³. Square's previous kiosk, sold for about two years, was an iPad stand without voice, and the new device is Square's first that takes a voice order ⁷. Toast's own counter kiosks remain touchscreen order-and-pay devices ⁴. None of Toast's reported numbers include a day of competition from the new terminal, and coverage of the drop noted investor concern about added competition↗ rather than any lost account ⁴.

The count that settles it

Toast had not set a third-quarter report date as of October 15; it reported the first quarter on May 7 and the second on August 4, a cadence that points to early November ⁹. The metric to watch is net location additions, which Toast reports every quarter. The kiosk becomes a story the day that count slows.