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 a 1.5% in-person rate and, on its UK page, a subscription of 36 € a month for its Basic tier. 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. Of the ten providers here that sell a mobile reader, one prints no card-present rate: read the provider pages in this index for exactly what each one does say.

Nine of the ten providers in this index that sell a mobile reader print an in-person rate for a UK consumer card on their own page. They run from 0.79% on Lopay's Essential account to 1.75% at Zettle, Square and Elavon, with SumUp and Viva at 1.69%, Shopify at 1.5% and myPOS at 1.10% plus 7p; the median is 1.69%. On a £4,000 month the gap between 1.69% and 1.75% is about £2.40, while the gap between 1.75% and 0.79% is about £38, so the provider choice matters more at the cheap end than in the crowded middle. Stripe is the tenth: its page prints online rates and no card-present percentage. 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.

The reader is a one-off purchase on this shelf, and the printed prices are low. Elavon prints a £5 one-off device cost on its Start Simple plan, Tide's Nano starts from £11 plus VAT, Zettle's reader is from £29 excluding VAT for new business users only, and myPOS prints £39 excluding VAT for its myPOS Go 2. A mobile PDQ machine, to use the older trade name, is the same purchase: the device is paid for once and the running cost is the rate on every sale. Check the VAT basis before comparing, because Tide, Zettle and myPOS print their device prices without it, and check whether the offer covers a second reader at the same price.

Common questions

What is the cheapest card machine for a small business?

On printed rates, Lopay's Essential account publishes the lowest in-person figure for a mobile reader in this index at 0.79% for UK consumer Visa and Mastercard, and SumUp prints 1.69% with no monthly fee. On printed device prices, Elavon prints a £5 one-off device cost and Tide's Nano starts from £11 plus VAT. The cheapest rate and the cheapest device rarely come from the same provider.

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. Among the mobile reader providers here, Stripe's page prints its online rates and no card-present percentage, so it is listed 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.

How much are mobile card machine fees?

The fee is a percentage of each sale, sometimes with a fixed pence element. Printed in-person rates for a mobile reader in this index run from 0.79% to 1.75%, with a median of 1.69%. Most of the entry offers carry no monthly fee: SumUp, myPOS and Elavon's Start Simple plan each print £0 a month, and myPOS adds 7p per transaction to its 1.10%.

Can I get a mobile card reader with printer?

A reader that pairs with a phone or tablet has no printer of its own. If your customers expect a paper receipt, the choice is a separate receipt printer beside the phone, or a portable card machine, which is a complete terminal and can carry its own printer. None of the reader prices quoted here includes a printer, and a price for a reader bundled with one is not published on the pages read for this index.

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