Everything is weird in the US so can't tell how different it would be, but in Chile you can get a handheld personal car reader [1][2] for around ~25USD to 50USD, even if they needed something more specialized I really can't see them becoming prohibitively expensive, even the matching POS from the same company is just like 400USD[3]
I can get the same deal here if I look for it, nothing special about Chile, etc. Most restaurant/business owners aren't tech savvy and will switch when their equipment fails, not to keep up with tech trends.