Mobile credit card machines for small business, on the rates providers print

What providers print for this type

How to choose one

1. Read the rate as printed, not as advertised. The headline percentage is usually the in-person rate for a UK consumer card. Non-UK cards, keyed-in payments and payment links are often priced separately on the same page, and the difference is larger than the difference between providers.
2. Price the reader, then the second reader. The advertised device price is frequently a new-customer offer for one unit. Zettle prints 'From £29' against 'New business users only' and £69 for additional readers on the same page; if you need two tills you are buying at the second price.
3. Check what happens above a turnover threshold. Several providers price a lower rate behind a monthly fee. SumUp prints 1.69% at £0 a month and 0.99% at £19, and says the second is worth it above £3,000 a month. That crossover is arithmetic you can do before you sign anything.
4. Decide whether the till matters. A reader alone takes payments. A till system adds stock, staff and reporting, and is usually a separate monthly subscription; Shopify prints £25 a month for POS Lite with a 1.7% in-person rate. Buying the reader first and the till later is normal and costs nothing extra.
5. Ask what is NOT on the page. Where a provider prints no rate, that is the finding. Two of the seven here print none: read the provider pages in this index for exactly what each one does say.

On the rates each provider prints on its own page, an in-person sale on a UK consumer card runs between 1.40% and 1.75%. On a £4,000 month that spread is about £14, which is less than most businesses expect and much less than the difference a monthly plan or a hardware purchase makes. The device is the bigger one-off: readers start around £29 on a new-customer offer and sit nearer £69 to £149 outside one. Nothing here is a quote for your business, and none of these figures came from a salesperson: each is the number the provider prints, with the day it was read beside it.

A card payment carries three costs stacked on each other: the interchange the card issuer keeps, the scheme fee Visa or Mastercard charges, and the acquirer's own margin. A flat-rate provider blends all three into one percentage, which is why a simple 1.75% can be a good deal on a debit-heavy shop and a poor one on a business taking mostly UK debit cards, where the underlying interchange is capped very low. That cap is why interchange-plus pricing exists at all, and why the providers offering it usually will not print a number: their price depends on your card mix.

The rate is printed and the contract rarely is. On this shelf the pay-as-you-go providers sell hardware outright with no term, and the traditional acquirers rent the terminal on a multi-year agreement with a monthly minimum, an authorisation fee per transaction and a PCI compliance charge. None of those appear on a headline rate. Ask for the total monthly cost at your own turnover, in writing, before signing anything, and ask what it becomes in month thirteen.

Common questions

What is the cheapest card machine for a small business?

On printed rates, Paymentsense publishes the lowest in-person figure in this index at 1.40% for a UK-based Mastercard or Visa, and SumUp the lowest with no monthly fee at 1.69%. Cheapest overall depends on your turnover: a lower rate behind a monthly fee only wins above the crossover, which SumUp itself puts at £3,000 a month for its £19 plan.

Do I need a monthly contract for a card reader?

Not for the pay-as-you-go providers here, which sell the device outright and charge per transaction with no term. Traditional acquirers usually rent the terminal on a multi-year agreement instead; that is a different product with a different cost shape, and its price is generally not published.

Why will some providers not publish a rate?

Because their price depends on your card mix and turnover, and because a published number is one a competitor can undercut. Two of the seven providers in this index print none: one shows worked examples beside the words 'Customised pricing', the other serves a calculator that fills in client-side. Both are listed here with that fact rather than with a guess.

Is a mobile reader safe to use?

The readers here are supplied by firms authorised or registered by the FCA for payment services, and the card data is handled by the device and the acquirer rather than by your phone. The practical risks are ordinary ones: losing the device, and disputes, which every provider handles under the card scheme rules rather than its own.

Other machine types

• Compare Mobile card reader on printed rates
• Compare Countertop card machine on printed rates
• Compare Portable card machine on printed rates
• Compare EPOS till system on printed rates