How we compare card machines
We list 16 card machine providers selling into the UK, and a published rate card exists for 10 providers. Where a provider quotes instead, we show a quote rather than a figure invented on its behalf, because putting a number against a company that declines to publish one is a guess wearing the clothes of a fact.
The comparison is driven by your monthly card turnover and your average transaction size, because those two inputs turn a percentage and a pence-per-sale charge into an actual monthly bill. Ranking is arithmetic on the published rate at the volume you enter. Commission never moves a provider, we do not sell position, and a provider that will not publish a rate cannot be ranked on one.
Figures are what each provider publishes to a UK buyer. Card machine pricing is normally quoted before VAT and hardware usually is too, so check the basis before setting a published rate card against a quote read to you over the phone.
Every fee a card machine charges, not just the headline rate
Two facts sit underneath every rate here, and they explain most of what looks arbitrary about card machine pricing.
The first is interchange, the slice your provider pays the cardholder bank on every sale. UK consumer card interchange is capped by regulation at 0.2% on debit and 0.3% on credit, with scheme fees on top. No provider prices below its own input cost, which is why published in-person rates cluster so tightly and why a dramatically lower advertised number is usually describing one card type rather than your whole mix.
That is also the difference between the two ways a rate is quoted. A blended rate charges one percentage across everything, so a debit-heavy cafe subsidises the occasional premium credit card. Interchange-plus passes the real interchange through and adds a margin, so your bill moves with your card mix. Adyen quotes its in-person pricing as Interchange++ (custom), while SumUp quotes 1.69% and Elavon quotes 0.99%. Neither model is a trick. Which one wins depends entirely on what your customers hand over.
The second fact is that you cannot pass any of it on. Surcharging a consumer for paying by debit or credit card has been unlawful in the UK since January 2018, so a card machine fee is a cost your margin absorbs rather than a line you can add at the till.
Beyond the percentage, four charges do the real damage to a small ticket:
The pence per sale. myPOS lists 7p (in-person) and Paymentsense lists 5p, while Square lists None (in-person). On a coffee that charge matters more than a tenth of a percent. On a large invoice it is noise.
Amex and commercial cards. Square prices Amex at 1.75% (same flat rate) and Zeller at 1.99%, and myPOS prices it at 2.45% + 7p (in-person). A flat-rate provider absorbing Amex at its ordinary number is making a deliberate choice, and it is worth real money if your customers expense their lunch.
Non-UK cards. Square adds +1.5% non-UK cards, Stripe adds +1.75% approx (non-EEA), TYL by NatWest lists None and SumUp lists Included in flat rate. In a tourist town this row can outweigh the headline rate.
PCI compliance. This is the one buyers forget, because it is charged monthly whether you sell anything or not. Teya lists Included free and Dojo lists Included (non-compliance £15+VAT/mo), while Paymentsense lists £4.95+VAT/mo (separate) and Worldpay lists ~£5/mo (not included). Read the bracket as carefully as the number: several include compliance but charge a monthly penalty while you remain uncertified, a bill you can trigger simply by not completing a questionnaire.
Then there are the exception fees. A disputed sale costs £20 on Stripe and £28 on Paymentsense, while Square lists Free. Refunds are their own row: myPOS lists 25p and TYL by NatWest lists Free. If you run a returns-heavy shop, that row is not an edge case.
Pay as you go or a monthly plan: two ways to buy a card machine
This is the real fork in the UK market, and almost everything else follows from it.
Pay as you go means you buy a reader once, pay a flat percentage on what you take, and owe nothing in a quiet month. SumUp lists £0/mo, Zettle lists £0/mo, Square lists £0/mo (Free plan) and Zeller lists £0/mo. The rate is usually higher than a negotiated one, and that premium is the price of owing nothing when you are shut.
A monthly plan bundles the terminal, support and often PCI into a subscription, with a lower rate underneath it and a term attached. Elavon lists From £15/mo (incl terminal), Paymentsense lists ~£50+/mo and Airwallex lists £19/mo (Explore; £0/mo if you deposit £10k+/mo or hold a £10k+ balance). Several of the larger names do not publish a monthly figure at all: Dojo lists Get quote and Takepayments lists Get quote, which means the number you get is the number a salesperson decides you will accept.
The crossover is entirely about volume, which is what the calculator on this page is for. A fixed monthly fee is dead weight at low turnover and trivial at high turnover, while a rate difference does the opposite. Enter your actual card takings and average sale, not the ones you hope for next summer.
Two honest warnings. If you trade seasonally, a market stall or a summer-only kiosk, a monthly fee bills you through every closed month, and pay as you go is often right even at a worse rate. And if you take a few hundred pounds a month, you probably do not need a monthly plan yet: the saving on the rate cannot cover the subscription, so you would be buying an account manager rather than a discount.
Contract length and exit fees on a card machine agreement
The UK has a long and deserved reputation for card machine contracts that are harder to leave than to sign, and this is the row buyers check most and read least carefully.
What you actually sign is often two agreements. One is the merchant services agreement with the acquirer, which sets the rate and the term. The other is a hardware hire agreement, frequently with a separate leasing company, which can run longer than the payments contract and survive its cancellation. Dojo, for example, publishes its terminal arrangement as Purchase from £79 / rental from £15-25/mo (third-party), where the rental sits with a third party. Ask which company each document is with before you sign either.
The published terms differ widely. Square lists No contract, SumUp lists No contract and Adyen lists No minimum contract. At the other end, Worldpay lists 18 months, Takepayments lists 12 months and Elavon lists 12 months. Some publish a choice: Dojo lists Fix: 12 months; Flex: 30-day rolling and Barclaycard lists Anywhere: none; Touch: 12 months; Flex Mobile: 18 months, so the same brand can be a rolling arrangement or a multi-year one depending on which product the salesperson puts in front of you.
The exit charge is the row that decides what a bad decision costs. Teya publishes £40/mo remaining (annual), while Barclaycard publishes None (all plans) and TYL by NatWest publishes None. Where the row reads Contact provider, that is the provider choosing not to publish it, and an unpublished exit charge is a reason to get the figure in writing before you commit, not a reason to assume there is not one.
Three things to establish in writing before signing anything with a term:
The notice period and the renewal behaviour. A twelve month term that renews automatically unless cancelled inside a short window is a different product from a twelve month term that lapses into a rolling month.
Whether the rate is fixed for the term. Scheme fee increases are commonly passed through mid-contract, so a quoted rate can move without the contract changing.
Who owns the terminal at the end. On a hire agreement you may still be returning hardware, in working order, after the payments contract has ended.
Cheap or free card machine hardware, and what pays for it
A terminal advertised at a token price, or at nothing at all, is a genuine offer. It is also a payment that has moved rather than disappeared, and it is worth knowing which of three places it went.
It can go into the rate, which is why a plan with free hardware often carries a higher percentage than one where you buy the reader outright. It can go into a monthly hire line, so you never own the device and the cost continues indefinitely. Or it can go into the term, where the hardware is financed across a fixed contract and the exit charge is what protects the provider from an early departure.
You can see all three shapes in the published rows. Zettle lists First reader £29 / extra £69 (excl VAT) and Square lists Reader £19 / Stand £99 / Terminal £149 / Register £699 (excl VAT), which is the buy-it-once model. Teya lists From £14.99/mo rental (purchase price not published) and Worldpay lists ~£20/mo rental (included in indicative total), which is the hire model. Elavon lists £5 one-off (Start Simple) / included in plan (Booster/Core) and Barclaycard lists Anywhere £29+VAT one-off; Touch and Flex Mobile £0 upfront (rental), where a small one-off charge sits beside a plan or a rental option. Stripe and Zeller sell outright too, at WisePad 3 £49 / Reader S700 £229 (excl VAT) and Terminal 1x £99 / Terminal 2 £149 (excl VAT) respectively.
The device type matters as much as the price, because it decides whether you are buying a card machine or a till. Zeller lists a built-in POS as Yes and Square lists Yes, while Dojo lists No and expects you to bring an EPOS system, which is why it lists 450+ EPOS integrations. A smart terminal that runs your menu, your stock and your reporting is a different purchase from a reader that only takes money, and comparing the two on hardware price alone will mislead you.
Two practical rows before you commit to a device. Connectivity decides whether it works where you actually trade: Dojo lists WiFi, 4G/SIM and Square lists Bluetooth, WiFi, Ethernet, and a terminal without a SIM is not a market stall terminal. Offline capability decides what happens when the broadband drops mid-service: Square lists offline payments as Yes, SumUp lists Yes and Dojo lists No.
Tap to Pay on a phone is the genuinely free option, and several providers here support contactless on an ordinary phone with no terminal at all. For a sole trader still testing whether card acceptance is worth it, that is a better first step than any hardware purchase.
Settlement speed: when a card machine actually pays you
Settlement is the gap between a customer tapping and the money being spendable in your bank account, and it is the row small businesses underrate until their first slow week.
Dojo lists settlement as Next business day by 10am and Paymentsense lists Next working day. Teya lists Instant to Teya account; next-day 9am incl weekends to bank and myPOS lists Instant (~3 seconds to myPOS business account); £1.50 per bank transfer out (GBP; SEPA £4.00), both of which route through the provider's own account first. Zeller lists Same-day to Zeller Business Account; next business day to any bank, Barclaycard lists Next business day to Barclays account; 3-7 days to other banks and Stripe lists T+3 standard (new accounts T+7); instant at 1% min 40p.
Read those rows for two things the headline hides. The first is weekends and bank holidays: next business day means Friday takings land on Monday, and a hospitality business does most of its trade precisely when the banking calendar is closed. SumUp lists Next business day (including weekends with SumUp business account) and Zettle lists Minutes to PayPal balance (new accounts); 1-2 business days (legacy); no weekend deposits, and the conditions in those strings are the whole answer.
The second is whether fast settlement is included or sold. Where it is sold, it is normally priced as a percentage of the money you are being paid early. Square lists instant payouts at 1.5% and Stripe lists 1% min 40p, while Teya lists Free (to Teya account) and Zeller lists Free (same/next-day). If you would use instant payouts routinely rather than in an emergency, add that charge to the rate before comparing anything: used daily it is not a feature, it is a second transaction fee.
There is a catch worth naming on the instant-settlement providers. Money that reaches a provider's own business account in seconds still has to reach the account your suppliers and HMRC direct debits are paid from, and that transfer can carry its own charge and its own timing. myPOS lists that transfer out as £1.50 (bank transfer). Fast to a wallet is not the same as fast to your bank, and for cash flow purposes only the second one counts.