takepayments Merchant Services Review

takepayments may start with a lowercase but its offerings can capitalise your business. It’s the best contract merchant account we came across in our research, topping our best card machines ranking with a stellar 4.8/5 score.

This result reflects its various reporting tools, including real time card processing and inventory tracking, as well as its solid customer score. These features are key to help your business grow and therefore expand revenue – important goals for those fighting the rising costs of doing business.

If you’re still unconvinced, just give our free quote tool a try. It allows you to get bespoke quotes from our trusted providers for you to compare. However, if takepayments still appeals to you, read our rundown below to know more about what it can do.

What is takepayments?

You can probably guess by its name that this UK-based merchant account provider allows you to take payments. As with all merchant accounts, its main purpose is to serve as a buffer account for the money you charge, while it’s being transferred from the bank accounts of your customers to yours. It also provides other services, such as card machine (also called PDQ machines) leases, POS systems, and online payment gateways.

How much does takepayments cost?

takepayments’ pricing is bespoke, so you’ll need to request a quote to know your exact PDQ machine costs and software charges.

takepayments’ contract length is 18 months. This is longer than Dojo’s six months and the same Worldpay’s 18 months. Unlike Barclaycard, it doesn’t offer a pay-as-you-go scheme.

If you’re wondering how to end a card machine contract in case things don’t go as planned, it’s worth noting that takepayments charge an early termination administration charge of £40 plus a non-usage fee of £30 for every month left in your agreement, should you wish to exit it early.

That said, takepayments boasts a 4.1/5 score for price in our research, making it the runner-up in this category. Your actual fee will be stated in your quote, but it usually isn’t higher than 2.29%.

takepayments also beats Retail Merchant Services for online transaction fees, with the former charging 10p per online transaction, while the latter charges 0.79% plus 10p. The provider even waives that charge for your first 400 online transactions. Conveniently, unlike Barclaycard, takepayments doesn’t charge setup fees.

The thorn in takepayment’s side is its account fee. Like the transaction fee, it varies, but its starting price of £20 + VAT per month is one of the highest we’ve seen in our research. While it’s cheaper than Dojo’s £24.95 + VAT per month, it’s pricier than Worldpay’s (£9.95 + VAT per month) and that of Retail Merchant Services (£10 + VAT per month).

takepayments offers good value for money due to its wide reporting and multi-currency support, especially if you own a medium-sized business that can benefit from these features. Startup owners who are just looking to begin taking payments will be better served by mobile merchant accounts such as Zettle and Square, this is because they don’t incur fixed costs.

If you’d like to know for sure which company is the right match for you, the best way is to compare quotes. To do that, fill in our free quote tool and you’ll be comparing quotes from several providers in no time!

takepayments’ pros and cons

✔️ Pro: Lots of hardware choices

takepayments offers four types of card readers: countertop, portable, mobile, and the exclusive takepaymentsplus. This variety means it’s got a high chance of fitting your businesses’ needs in terms of mobility and connectivity. Both of takepayments’ mobile options, which includes Ingenico’s IWL251 and the M3500 3G models, and the takepaymentplus reader come with their own data. This makes the provider worth considering if you’re a mobile business owner.

✔️ Pro: Enhanced security

takepayments is Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant, which means it takes rigorous steps to secure card data. Its compliance process involves a self-assessment that includes up to 300 questions – but the provider offers guidance throughout. Also, like Retail Merchant Services, takepayments supports 3D secure authentication to prevent fraud and it runs credit checks on new merchants.

❌ Con: No invoicing tool

takepayments’ main weakness is its lack of an invoicing tool. Therefore, it doesn’t provide you with a system for you to create and send personalised invoices to your customers. While it’s not a staple of the traditional merchant account market, this feature is consistently mentioned as important in our audience research. Of takepayments’ direct competitors, only Barclaycard offers this, albeit through a third-party integration. However, this is commonly offered in mobile merchant accounts, such as SumUp and Stripe.

takeypayments’ key features explained

Reporting tools

takepayments offers the most reporting tools among all the contract payment taking systems we looked into. This sees it score a perfect 5/5 for features, topping this category in our research. It packs eight reporting tools, which include accounting detailing, SMS/email receipt logging and product customisation. It also allows for inventory tracking, as well as employee sales and cash received reporting. In comparison, this is way more than Barclaycard and Dojo, which only offer three and two, respectively. Unsurprisingly, in our analysis, the former scores 3.9/5 and the latter, a low 2.2/5.

Payment methods and currencies

Because of its various payment methods, takepayments also tops our market analysis when it comes to taking payments. Our researchers gave it a glowing score of 5/5 for this category. Beyond the good old card machine, takepayments can process transactions via checkout links and via telephone order through its virtual terminal. This puts it on par with Worldpay and Retail Merchant Services (both of which also receive 5/5 scores in our analysis), but takepayments beats them in multi currency support. It accepts a staggering 170 currencies – more than any other merchant account we looked into (traditional or mobile). This means it accepts 50 more currencies than Worldpay and 70 more than Retail Merchant Services.

EPOS extension

Unlike Worldpay and Dojo, takepayments offers hardware that transforms it into a EPOS system. The pros of an EPOS systems, especially for restaurateurs, include the ability to allow for bookings and time keeping, though there’s also a version for retailers.

Monthly costs for the tablet-sized tPOS counter are £45 + VAT for retailers and £55 + VAT for hospitality businesses, while the ones for the dual-screen tPOS complete are £55 + VAT for retailers and £65 + VAT for hospitality businesses. Both options also entail a £250 + VAT setup fee. In comparison, Barclaycard’s POS hardware (Smartpay Touch) costs way less: £29 + VAT per month and no setup fee. Even cheaper are mobile merchant accounts like Square and Zettle, which offer their EPOS systems at no extra cost.

For online business owners, takepayment packs a virtual terminal, which allows you to sell online. This convenient feature helped it land a spot in our best payment gateway providers ranking.

What kind of business is takepayments best for?

takepayments is best for medium-sized businesses that can fully use (and make the most out of) its accounting detailing and product customisation. Its employee sales tracking tool is also a helpful feature for such companies, which are likely to have various employees.

If you own a business this size and deal with substantial sales volume, all the better. This means that takepayments’ high account fee – which starts at £20 + VAT – is unlikely to break your bank, but you’ll still be able to benefit from its low transaction fees, effectively offsetting the fixed costs over time.

However, if you own a startup or a small business, you’re better off with cheaper options. If you accept account fees in order to get cheaper transaction fees, then Retail Merchant Services is worth considering. Its account fee starts at £10 + VAT and its transaction fees vary between 0.4% and 0.8%. Otherwise, mobile merchant accounts such as Revolut and Stripe are good fits. They forego account fees but bite more off transactions: the former charges 0.8% + 2p for in-person payments and the latter charges 1.4% + 20p for those.

How does takepayments compare to its competitors?

Price

takepayments has bespoke transaction fees and scores 4.1/5 in price in our research.

On the other hand, takepayments has one of highest base account fees we came across in our merchant account comparison. At £20 + VAT, it’s pricier than Worldpay’s (£9.95 + VAT per month) and Retail Merchant Services’ (£10 + VAT per month), but cheaper than Dojo’s (£24.95 + VAT per month).

Bear in mind that all of takepayments’ prices are bespoke, so what you’d pay for its service will be stated in your quote.

Features

Scoring a 5/5 for features in our in-depth research, takepayments also comes out on top in this category – and that’s no mean feat. It offers eight helpful reporting tools, which is two more than Retail Merchant Services and four more than Worldpay.

takepayments packs 16 third-party integrations, which is more than Dojo, Retail Merchant Services, and Barclaycard (all of which only offer one), but way less than Worldpay, which offers 100. More integrations means you can run several aspects of your business in sync.

takepayments is also the champion of multi-currency support, accepting payments in 170 currencies (!), beating Worldpay’s 120 and Retail Merchant Services’ 100. This particularly suits international businesses, like online retailers.

Does takepayments have good customer reviews?

takepayments has a stellar review track record and it’s no wonder it topped the customer score category in our research with a 4.4/5.

takepayments’ customer support was particularly showered with praise, with many reviews naming and complimenting its support agents.

However, takepayments’ hardware woes and contract terms were harshly criticised.

To the above review, a customer service representative replied asking for more information in order to help sort the situation.

Our methodology

To give a rundown on takepayments, we looked at five key areas during our in-depth research: price, taking payments, features, customer support, and customer score. We also looked at four of its direct competitors to see how takepayments compares with the wider market. We then consolidated the data into the scores we discuss throughout the article.

takepayments is the best contract payment taking system in our research, with an amazing 4.8/5 score. Driving the point home, it tops three of the five categories we analysed: taking payments, features, and customer score.

In the first, we looked at the different ways the providers accept payments and scored them based on how many they packed. In the second, we analysed their reporting tools, third-party integrations and multi-currency support – the more they had, the higher the score. And in the latter, we amalgamated the scores the providers received in several online review aggregators to produce an average. takepayments’ performance in them allows us to reassure you of the quality of its service.