If you run a construction trade and you want to take card payments, the choice of provider matters more than most advice admits, and it matters in a way that depends almost entirely on the size of your jobs. A landscaper taking a £200 final payment and a builder taking a £40,000 stage payment are not solving the same problem, and a provider that is the right answer for one is an expensive mistake for the other. This guide compares the main providers, shows where the money actually leaks, which is usually the contract rather than the headline rate, and explains the point at which paying by card stops making sense at all.
Rates were checked in June 2026. Card pricing changes often, so treat every figure here as a guide and confirm the current rate on the provider's own page before you sign anything. This is general information, not financial advice.
The one thing that decides it: your average job size
The most common mistake is choosing a provider on its brand or its advertised rate. The thing that actually decides which provider is cheapest for you is your average job size, and underneath that, how you take the payment. If you tap a card on a handheld reader you pay one rate. If you send a payment link or key the card in over the phone, which is how a great deal of trade work is actually paid, almost every provider charges you more. Keep that in mind throughout, because the in-person headline rate is rarely the rate you end up paying.
What you are actually paying
Every card payment is built from three costs, and only one of them is really yours to shop around on.
The first is interchange, paid to the bank that issued your customer's card. On UK consumer cards this is capped by law at 0.2% on debit and 0.3% on credit. On business and corporate cards it is not capped and runs far higher. On a payment link, which counts as card-not-present, Visa's own published schedule (April 2025) puts a business debit card at 1.15%, a business credit card at 1.65%, and a corporate or purchasing card at 1.85%. On a £20,000 payment from a client's corporate card that is about £370 in interchange before anything else. If a lot of your customers are businesses paying on company cards, this is your real cost, and it is covered in full in the companion guide on which cards to accept.
The second is scheme fees, paid to Visa or Mastercard. Smaller, but rising, and not shown in plain terms.
The third is the provider's own margin, which is the part you negotiate.
A flat-rate provider such as SumUp, Square or Zettle rolls all three into one simple percentage. It is easy to understand, but a customer paying on a cheap debit card ends up subsidising the cost of expensive cards, and you never see the split. An interchange-plus account (sometimes called cost-plus) passes through the real interchange and adds a clear margin on top. It usually wins once your volumes are high enough and a good share of your takings are on debit cards, and at construction ticket sizes you have the standing to ask for it.
The providers, compared
The rates below are the published rates for each provider, checked June 2026. Confirm the current figure before signing.
SumUp. On the standard plan, 1.69% in person and 2.5% online or by payment link, with no monthly fee, no contract, and next-day settlement including weekends. The Payments Plus plan is £19 a month and drops the in-person rate to 0.99% on UK debit and credit, but the online rate stays at 2.5% and premium, international and American Express cards are still 1.69% in person. The point to watch is that the cheap 0.99% headline does not apply if you mostly invoice remotely, because that is charged at 2.5%. Best for lower volumes and genuinely in-person work.
Square. 1.75% in person and 2.5% on the virtual terminal and payment links, with no monthly fee, no contract, no PCI fee, and no chargeback fee. Clean and predictable, with the same rate across card types on keyed payments. A strong default for a trade that wants no commitment.
Zettle (PayPal). 1.75% in person and 2.5% on payment links, with no monthly fee and no contract. Watch the keyed, card-not-present rate, which is materially higher than the in-person headline.
Stripe. 1.4% plus 10p in person for UK and EEA cards, and 1.5% plus 20p online or by payment link for standard UK cards, with no monthly fee. The rate you see quoted around the web, 1.5% plus 20p, is the online rate, not the in-person one. Stripe is strong for remote and online-led work but is more technical to set up cleanly than the trade-focused tools.
Dojo. The Fix plan is £39.99 a month covering up to £3,999 of card turnover, then 1% on anything above that, aimed at businesses under £100,000 a year. Payment links cost 0.5% above the in-person rate. The contract runs 12 months, settlement is next day by 10am seven days a week, and Dojo will cover up to £500 of a competitor's exit fees if you switch. The catch is that the £39.99 is payable whatever your volume, so the effective rate is only good once you are doing a few thousand a month.
Worldpay. The Simplicity plan is 1.5% in person, but with a fixed monthly stack on top: terminal hire around £17.50, PCI around £5, and a minimum monthly charge around £15, so roughly £37.50 a month before a single transaction, on an 18-month terminal contract. The 1.5% looks competitive, but the fixed cost makes it more expensive than a no-monthly-fee provider until you are doing several thousand a month.
Barclaycard. A pay-as-you-go option around 1.6% with a minimum monthly charge, and contracted accounts with lower per-transaction rates but a stack of fixed monthly fees (terminal, gateway, PCI, minimum charge) that add up to roughly £40 to £65 a month. Barclaycard's merchant services are mid-transition at the time of writing, so check the exact terms you are offered.
takepayments. A reseller of acquiring services. Competitive per-transaction rates are possible, but the all-in fixed monthly cost, around £37 a month once you add the minimum charge, PCI and terminal, makes it expensive below a few thousand a month. Read every document as one contract and get the rate in writing before signing.
Bank-direct merchant accounts (Lloyds Cardnet, NatWest Tyl, HSBC and similar). Quoted individually, usually interchange-plus, and often the best rates once you are above roughly £50,000 a year, but with formal underwriting and fixed monthly fees. Worth a quote at higher volumes.
Here is the same information at a glance. All figures exclude VAT and were checked June 2026.
| Provider | In person | Payment link / keyed | Monthly fixed cost | Contract |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SumUp (standard) | 1.69% | 2.5% | None | None |
| SumUp Payments Plus | 0.99% UK debit/credit | 2.5% | £19 | Monthly rolling |
| Square | 1.75% | 2.5% | None | None |
| Zettle | 1.75% | 2.5% | None | None |
| Stripe | 1.4% + 10p | 1.5% + 20p | None | None |
| Dojo Fix | £39.99 covers up to £3,999, then 1% | in-person rate + 0.5% | £39.99 | 12 months |
| Worldpay Simplicity | 1.5% | varies | ~£37.50 | 18 months |
| Barclaycard (PAYG) | ~1.6% | ~1.6% | minimum charge applies | None |
| takepayments | ~1% + 2p | ~1.35% + 2p | ~£37 | 12 to 18 months |
| GoCardless (bank to bank) | not card | 1% + 20p, capped at £4 | None | None |
The traps are in the contract, not the rate
The per-transaction rate is rarely where a trade loses money. The contract is.
On contract length, the Payment Systems Regulator's Specific Direction 16, in force since January 2023 and varied in May 2024, limits card-machine hire contracts to a maximum 18-month initial term for businesses turning over up to £10 million. After that, the contract must roll month to month with no more than about a month's notice. Any longer initial term from a covered provider is not allowed, and the rule applies wherever a terminal is provided.
On early termination, the no-contract providers (SumUp, Square, Zettle, Stripe, GoCardless) charge nothing to leave. Contracted providers can charge the remaining value of the contract, which can run from a few hundred to a few thousand pounds, so always get the exit fee in writing before you sign.
On hardware, renting a terminal at £15 to £22 a month adds up to far more than the device is worth over an 18-month contract. Buying a reader outright, anywhere from £19 to £249 depending on the device, is usually lower risk, especially for seasonal work.
On minimum monthly charges, a floor fee of £15 to £20 a month means you pay even in a quiet month with no card takings. For a seasonal trade, the no-monthly-fee providers avoid this entirely.
On reserves, the flat-rate providers underwrite you automatically, so a single payment well outside your normal pattern, such as a sole trader on £500 jobs suddenly taking £40,000, can trigger a review and a short hold on the funds. For any single card payment above about £5,000, tell your provider first and check their large-transaction policy.
When card stops being the cheapest way to get paid
Two separate questions decide this. The first is your monthly volume. Roughly, a no-monthly-fee flat-rate provider is cheapest below about £2,700 a month, a fixed-fee or subscription plan such as SumUp Payments Plus or Dojo Fix wins in the middle, and above about £10,000 a month a negotiated interchange-plus or bank-direct account pulls ahead.
The second question is the size of the single payment, and for construction that is the one that matters most.
The exception that saves the most: large invoices
Once a single job runs into the thousands, a percentage card fee becomes the most expensive way you could possibly get paid, and the cheapest way is bank to bank. A Direct Debit service such as GoCardless charges 1% plus 20p, but capped at £4 per transaction. Above roughly £380, that cap makes it cheaper than any card, and the gap grows quickly as the job gets bigger.
| Single payment | Card at about 1.7% | Bank to bank (£4 cap) |
|---|---|---|
| £500 | about £8.45 | £4.00 |
| £5,000 | about £84.50 | £4.00 |
| £20,000 | about £338 | £4.00 |
| £40,000 | about £676 | £4.00 |
This is the single biggest saving in the whole guide, and it is almost never mentioned in trade payment advice. The trade-offs are honest ones. A Direct Debit mandate takes a few working days to set up the first time, so it does not work for a payment you need today. The customer needs a UK bank account and has to agree to the mandate, and some will not. And bank to bank does not give the customer the Section 75 credit-card protection that some clients specifically want on a large job, which the companion guide explains. For staged payments on a known project, where you set the schedule up once and collect at each milestone, none of those is usually a barrier, and the saving runs to hundreds or thousands of pounds per job.
For most trades the sensible setup is two tools: a cheap, no-contract card reader for small payments taken on the spot, and bank to bank for the large invoiced and staged payments.
What to do
Match the provider to your real average job size and to how you actually get paid, not to the advertised in-person rate. For any single payment above a few hundred pounds, send it bank to bank rather than by card. Once your volumes justify it, ask for interchange-plus pricing and a monthly breakdown of your card mix, so you can see what you are paying and on which card types. Then decide which card networks to accept and why, which is the subject of the companion guide.
Common questions
What is the cheapest card machine for a small UK trade?
For genuinely in-person work at lower volumes, SumUp's standard plan at 1.69% with no contract and no monthly fee is usually the cheapest all-in. Square is an equally clean no-contract option. Once you are doing more than a few thousand a month, a fixed-fee plan such as Dojo Fix or SumUp Payments Plus tends to win.
Do I have to accept American Express?
No. Acceptance is your choice. If you use a flat-rate provider, Amex is bundled at the same rate as every other card, so there is nothing to decide. If you hold a direct account, whether to accept it is a real decision, covered in the companion guide on which cards to accept.
Is it cheaper to take a £20,000 payment by card or by bank transfer?
By bank transfer or Direct Debit, by a wide margin. A card at around 1.7% would cost roughly £338 on £20,000, while a Direct Debit service capped at £4 costs £4. The trade-off is that Direct Debit takes a few days to set up and the customer must agree to it.
Can a card provider really lock me into an 18-month contract?
Up to 18 months on a terminal hire contract, yes, but no longer, under the Payment Systems Regulator's Specific Direction 16, and after that it must roll month to month. The no-contract providers avoid lock-in entirely.
Sources and a note on accuracy
Figures are taken from each provider's published pricing pages, Visa's UK domestic interchange schedule (April 2025), and the Payment Systems Regulator, all checked in June 2026. Card pricing changes regularly. Always confirm the current rate and contract terms directly with the provider before you commit. This guide is general information about how card payment pricing works and is not financial or legal advice.
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