Best Card Machines for Small Businesses in 2024

The UK is going cashless, with cards accounting for 85% of retail spending in 2023 in the UK, according to The British Retail Consortium. That’s why it’s never been more crucial for small businesses to find a card machine that can process payments efficiently, while charging budget-friendly transaction fees.

A small business card machine should also be quick to set up, easy to operate, able to integrate with your existing business software, and provide a payment system that can scale with your business.

According to our independent research, the takepaymentsplus, Zettle Card Reader 2, and Revolut Reader are the three best card machines for small businesses. They’re inexpensive and easy to use, and come with reporting tools and EPOS system integration.

Whether you're shopping around for your first card machine or looking to switch providers, there are several devices also worth considering:

With the cost of doing business rising in the UK, finding an affordable card machine deal is more important than ever. We can help with that – simply tell us what your business needs and we'll match you with suitable providers. They'll be in contact with obligation-free quotes that are tailored to you.

Answer the question below to get started:

The best card machines for small businesses

We've hand-picked, rated, and compared the best card machines to help you choose the right device for your small business. Take a look at the below table for a quick summary, and read on for our detailed reviews of each reader:

1. takepaymentsplus

Best for help and support

Need to know

• Portable or mobile card machine, depending on contract
• 18-month contract
• Transfers funds the next day
• 10-hour battery life
• Wifi/Bluetooth/4G connectivity

Payments accepted

What makes the takepaymentsplus a top card machine for small businesses?

takepayments’ excellent customer support is truly what makes it a desirable card machine provider for small businesses. It has a phone line that’s open even on weekends and bank holidays, which is great if your business also operates during these hours.

The company also has thousands of glowing reviews on TrustPilot, with customers praising its customer service team for their clarity and quick fixes.

takepayments offers negotiable transaction fees, but you’re more likely to get a good deal if your business has a mid to high transaction value and processes at least £2,000 in card payments a month. Ideal candidates are restaurants, retail stores, and beauty salons.

If that’s you, you’ll probably also get some use out of the takepaymentplus’ virtual terminal, designed for taking over-the-phone payments.

How does the takepaymentsplus compare with competitors?

The takepaymentsplus is the only card reader on this list that comes with a fixed term contract and a monthly fee. takepayments is also the only company on this list that isn't fully transparent with its pricing, since almost everything is negotiable.

This means that it might not be the best option for more casual ventures, such as side hustles, seasonal vendors, or very new small businesses with a low number of transactions. You probably won’t be able to negotiate low transaction fees if your sales volume is low, so you’ll benefit more from fixed and clear transaction fees.

However, the takepaymentsplus really shines when it comes to its EPOS system. It comes with a comprehensive set of reporting tools, including real-time inventory tracking, employee sales tracking, accounting, and the ability to print detailed receipts.

The downside is that all this isn't free – you’ll have to pay a monthly fee to use this software. Zettle and Stripe, on the other hand, offer similar features for free on their EPOS apps.

Overall, the takepaymentsplus is best suited to more established small businesses that have several employees and a steady flow of card-paying customers.

2. Zettle Card Reader 2

Best value for money

Need to know

• Mobile card machine
• No fixed-term contract
• Transfers funds in 1-2 working days
• 8-hour battery life (100 transactions)
• Bluetooth connectivity

Payments accepted

What makes the Zettle Card Reader 2 a top card machine for small businesses?

The Zettle Card Reader 2 is one of the most affordable card machines on our list, only starting at £29 + VAT, with no additional monthly fees. Plus, its fixed-rate transaction fees (1.75%) mean you know exactly what you’ll be paying every time you process a card payment.

It’s also easy to set up via the Zettle POS app, and once it’s up and running, the card reader only takes two seconds to power up, and five seconds to process a contactless payment.

All these features make it perfect for small businesses that are just starting to accept card payments. It doesn’t have the cheapest transaction fees on the market, but it’ll work well for businesses that process less than £2,000 in card payments a month, since the lower your transaction count is, the less this will cut into your profit.

With its small size, speed, and mobile nature, the Zettle card reader is a good option for pop-up shops, market venders, and food vans.

How does the Zettle Card Reader 2 compare with competitors?

The Zettle Card Reader offers great value for money. At £29 + VAT, it's cheaper than the Revolut Reader and the SumUp Air, which start from £49 and £39 respectively, and only slightly more expensive than the Square Reader.

At 1.75%, Zettle’s transaction fee is more expensive than Revolut’s, Stripe’s, and SumUp’s, but its EPOS platform comes with a better set of reporting tools meaning you get more bang for your buck.

The Zettle app has sales analytics and forecasting, inventory management, staff hours, and sell on the go reporting. takepayments has similar reporting features, with the advantage of its card reader being able to print detailed receipts. Comparatively, Revolut only has spend management and team management on offer, and SumUp mainly tracks transactions, payouts, and revenue.

Overall, if you're looking for an affordable solution with a comprehensive set of tracking and reporting features, the Zettle Card Reader 2 is a great choice.

What do users think of Zettle Card Reader 2?

Hannah Bailey of Batch1 told us she likes Zettle Card Reader's 2 portability. “If you have someone on the other side of the desk that's chatting to you, you can quickly take a sale of someone who just wants to be in and out.”

Meanwhile, Sugar & Style's Jessica Bedoya praised the reader's ease of use. “If you do the wrong thing, you just swipe and delete it. It's very user-friendly, very straightforward, especially for someone that's new [to it].”

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3. Revolut Reader

Best for cheap transaction fees

Need to know

• Mobile card machine
• No fixed term-contract
• Transfers funds in 1-2 business days
• All-day battery life (200 transactions)
• Bluetooth connectivity

Payments accepted

What's Revolut Reader's main draw?

Revolut offers the cheapest transaction fees we've come across, at 0.8% +2p for in-person transactions and 1% +20p for online transactions. It's great for small businesses that deal with large sales volumes – such as cafes or takeaway eateries – as they can benefit from these low transaction rates.

How does Revolut Reader compare to its competitors?

One of our highest-rated mobile card readers, the Revolut Reader offers low transaction fees, which is a boon if your business deals with high sales volumes. At 0.8% + 2p, its in-person transaction fee is far cheaper than Zettle's and Square's – both of which are 1.75% per sale.

Revolut supports payments from over 30 different currencies, which is more than Zettle's 25 supported currencies, and a huge step up from Square, which doesn’t support multi-currency payments at all. If your business sells internationally, this is certainly something worth considering.

However, Revolut comes up short when it comes to reporting, and the kinds of payments it can accept. With tools for spend management and team management, Revolut's analytics capabilities are less robust than those provided by Zettle (which also includes sales forecasting and inventory management) and Square, which also offers reporting on discounts and taxes. Revolut also accepts fewer payment types than Zettle, with methods including American Express and Discover missing from Revolut's roster.

4. Square Reader

Best for quick payouts

Need to know

• Mobile card machine
• No fixed-term contract
• Transfers funds the next business day
• 8-10 hour battery life
• Bluetooth connectivity

Payments accepted

What makes the Square Reader a top card machine for small businesses?

Due to its swift payout time, the Square Reader is a great choice if your business relies on quick cash flow. It'll transfer your customers' payments to your business bank account by the next working day, faster than most of the UK market's top card machine providers.

You can see payments in your account even faster – within 20 minutes – if you upgrade to Square's Instant Transfers setting, at the cost of an extra 1% transaction fee.

Square’s EPOS app is also very versatile and scalable, so if you’re a small business with big ambitions, this could be a good fit. The free basic version has all the features a small business needs, from inventory management to custom discounts and sales reporting.

Square also has free purpose-built EPOS systems for restaurants, retail stores, and appointment-based businesses, such as hairdressers.

As your business grows, you can upgrade your EPOS system (for a monthly fee) to fit your specific needs. You can either create a customised system with add-ons, or opt for one of Square’s pre-set plans, which start from £29 a month.

How does the Square Reader compare with competitors?

The Square Reader is the cheapest mobile card reader on our list, at £22.80 with VAT. It also comes with a free Square EPOS app, which is one of the best on the market, and has far more features than the Zettle and Revolut equivalents.

For example, Square can integrate with numerous software platforms, including accounting software, appointment scheduling tools, ecommerce website builders, delivery apps, and more. This is helpful if you're looking to build out your operation, or you're already using a few of these apps and want to incorporate them into one system.

In comparison, Zettle and Revolut come with fewer ready-made integrations, although they do have the basics such as Quickbooks — something to consider if you use a lot of different software.

It's also worth noting that the Square Reader is a great pick if you plan to open an online shop because, unlike Zettle and Revolut, it integrates seamlessly with Square's website builder.

While Square’s products are great when they work, if you encounter an issue, you might have trouble getting help. Square has good reviews on TrustPilot, but when we filtered comments for ‘customer service’, we found a very high number of bad reviews. The main complaints were that the support team was unhelpful and difficult to contact.

By contrast, takepayments, SumUp, and Stripe have much better support, with phone lines even open on weekends.

What do users think of Square Reader?

Katie Dutton, of The Great Frog jewellery shop in London, said she was impressed by how easy the Square Reader is to use. “The interface is really clear. There's nothing really confusing about it. I've got used to till systems, but this was way easier than the ones I've used before.”

5. SumUp Air

Best for businesses on the go

Need to know

• Mobile card machine
• No fixed-term contract
• Transfers funds in 1-3 working days
• 12-hour battery life (500 transactions)
• Bluetooth connectivity

Payments accepted

What makes the SumUp Air a top card machine for small businesses?

The SumUp Air, like many card machines on this list, is a great choice for small businesses because of its affordability, mobile nature, and compact size.

It comes with a free SumUp business bank account and card, which we recommend you use if you want access to your money sooner. Transfers to the SumUp Business Account only take one day, including on weekends, compared to the up to three business days it takes if you're on a separate merchant account. The free Business Account also reduces your transaction fee from 1.69% to 1.49%, another perk.

The SumUp Air has a 12-hour battery life, one of the longest for such a compact mobile card reader, making it a good option for small businesses on the go. It’s most suited to solo vendors or small teams, such as market vendors, tradesmen, and taxi drivers.

How does the SumUp Air compare with competitors?

At £39, the SumUp Air is more expensive than Square or Zettle’s card readers, which start from £29 + VAT and £22.80 respectively. It does, however, have lower transaction fees, at 1.69% (or 1.49% with a SumUp Business Account), compared to Square and Zettle’s 1.75%.

The SumUp Business Account also gives you access to a faster payout time – next day transfers – compared to takepayments and Stripe, which make you wait a few days.

Its reporting and management features are a little limited, however, only giving you reports on sales and revenue, payouts, and transactions. In comparison, Square, Zettle, and takepayments come with team and inventory management functions on top of their reporting features.

On the upside, SumUp’s support team is available at weekends, unlike Zettle and Square’s teams, which is a huge plus if your business operates during these hours. The SumUp Air also has a 12-hour battery life, the second-longest after the Stripe BBPOS WisePad 3’s 15-hours.

Overall, the SumUp Air is a good option for small businesses on the move, that have a team of one or two people.

6. Stripe BBPOS WisePad 3

Best for online businesses

Need to know

• Mobile card machine
• No fixed-term contract
• Transfers funds in up to seven business days
• 15-hour battery life
• Bluetooth connectivity

Payments accepted

Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, Diners Club, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay.

What makes the Stripe BBPOS WisePad 3 a top card machine for small businesses?

The Stripe BBPOS WisePad 3 is a great card reader for small businesses who primarily sell online using Stripe’s payment platform, but want to take occasional in-person payments.

That’s because Stripe is also an online payment gateway provider, making it easier to consolidate payments across platforms.

And since Stripe is a fixed transaction fee provider, it works best for occasional payments, since providers that operate on variable and negotiable transaction fees usually only give good deals to businesses that process a lot of transactions.

That being said, Stripe offers relatively low transaction fees, at 1.4% + 10p for all European card transactions, and 2.9% + 10p for non-European cards, making it a great choice if your customer base is international.

The Stripe BBPOS WisePad connects to Stripe’s EPOS terminal via Bluetooth, which offers a streamlined EPOS solution for those using Stripe for online payments. It can also be connected to a third party EPOS system.

The Stripe Terminal, which is the POS app that comes with the BBPOS WisePad, has a comprehensive range of features, including real-time reporting on charge, fee, refund and transfers, as well as reports on payment methods and currencies.

The main draw of the Stripe BBPOS WisePad 3 is that businesses already using Stripe’s online payment platform can consolidate both online and in-person transactions all on one software platform.

How does the Stripe BBPOS WisePad 3 compare with competitors?

If you take payments in foreign currencies, the Stripe BBPOS WisePad 3 is the best option. It supports over 125 currencies, while the Zettle Card Reader supports only 25, and the Revolut Reader supports 30. Stripe also doesn’t markup transaction fees for European cards, whereas every other provider on this list does.

On the other hand, the Stripe EPOS system is probably the least intuitive on this list. If you want to connect your card reader to Stripe’s EPOS terminal, you’ll need to know a little code, or hire a web developer, especially if you want to personalise the platform. This isn’t the case for any of the other card machines on this list.

Stripe also has a very long fund transfer time – up to seven business days – the longest of any provider on this list. takepayments and Square can get you your money the next day, and Revolut and Zettle can do it in two business days. Stripe does give you the option of getting instant payouts, but it costs an extra 1% for each transaction.

Overall, the Stripe BBPOS WisePad 3 is best suited for businesses who primarily sell online with Stripe and take occasional in-person payments, for example, with pop-up shops.

Buying guide: How to choose a small business card machine

Here are a few factors every small business owner should consider when choosing which card machine to go for:

Card machine price (one off vs. monthly payments)

Whether you choose to purchase your card machine outright or rent it for a monthly fee really depends on your business. Providers that offer monthly rental fees tend to have negotiable transaction rates, which works best for small businesses that process a lot of card payments (over £2,000 worth a month), and need several card machines.

Businesses that process fewer card payments and only need one or two machines are better off buying one outright.

Transaction fees

Some card machines come with flat rate transaction fees, which means you pay the same fee every time, while others have variable rates depending on the card type. Variable rates offer better value for money if you process a lot of card payments, while flat rates work better for small businesses with lower sales volumes.

Fund transfer time

Does your business need quick access to profits? If that’s the case, you’ll want to choose a card machine provider that transfers funds in one to two business days. Some can even offer instant access to funds, although this typically comes with an added fee.

The slowest transfer time we’ve seen is Stripe’s full week, but one to three business days is the industry standard.

Ease of use

Ease of use is important, especially if your business is just starting out. The most user friendly card machines come with one app on which you can track sales all in one place. The downside is that this type of software often has limited reporting tools.

Unfortunately, the more in-depth a platform’s sales and management features become, the less user friendly it tends to be. But if your business requires advanced functions, you’re probably not new to taking card payments, and know your way around an EPOS system.

Ready-made software integrations

If you’re planning on growing your business, or already have software that you use – accounting software, for example – make sure the card machine you choose can integrate with it.

Some providers, such as Square, allow for near countless integrations, while others, such as Stripe, are more limited.

PCI compliance and fraud prevention measures

Choosing a card machine that’s PCI compliant and has fraud prevention measures will protect both your business and your customers’ sensitive data.

It’s not a legal requirement in the UK, but all card networks require it, and can fine your bank if you don’t comply. This fine usually gets passed on to you, so it’s best to stay compliant.

Type of business

The type of business you run will have a big impact on which card machine is best for you.

Mobile businesses, such as sole traders and food trucks, will benefit from a card machine with a good battery life. Outdoor businesses such as market stalls and food trucks will want to choose a card machine with a built-in SIM card for reliable 3G connectivity, and shops could benefit from a system with inventory tracking features.

For our list of the best mobile card readers for small businesses, head over to our page.

Help and support

A good card machine shouldn’t cause you trouble very often, but if something does go wrong, you’ll want to have a readily available support service.

Think about when your business operates. If you’re active on the weekends, it’s a good idea to go with a provider whose customer service team is open on those days.

Some card machine providers have community centres on their websites. It’s worth considering going with a provider that has one, as they’re usually good resources for quick troubleshooting, especially if you can’t get hold of the support team.

How much should I spend on a card machine?

If you’re buying a card machine outright, you should expect to spend £20-50 on a mobile card reader, and £80-£180 on a portable one.

That’s why we recommend mobile card readers for small businesses, they’re cheap, compact, and versatile, and often come with core (but not overly sophisticated) functionality.

Countertop card machines are much more expensive as a standalone product, up to £400, but they’re usually rented instead of purchased outright. Renting any type of card machine costs £10-£40 a month.

Transaction fees with providers that offer a monthly plan are usually cheaper than with providers that sell card machines upfront, 0.1%-0.2% + 20p-50p compared to 1.5%-1.8%.

There aren’t any free card machines available for small businesses unfortunately, but if you’re looking for cheap ways to take card payments, our guide has got you covered.

How we rate card machines

To create an in-depth comparison between card readers, we researched 11 merchant account providers to find the top six card machines featured on this list.

We looked into the card machines they offered, and analysed them across four categories: price, features, customer support, and customer score.

• Price: we looked at account charges and transaction fees.
• Features: we researched the integration possibilities and the reporting tools on offer.
• Customer support: we verified the support channels and the opening hours.
• Customer feedback: we generated this by compiling data from various online review aggregators, such as Trustpilot. We also took the feedback the companies received into account.

With that data in hand, we ranked our findings, giving features that benefit small businesses a heavier weight. For instance, ease of use, low cost, and sturdiness are variables that ensured particular readers made the cut, such as the Square Reader.