Take card payments on your phone

You can take card payments on an iPhone or Android phone with no card reader at all, for 0.79% + 8p to 1.75% a sale and no monthly fee. On a shop taking £5,000 a month in £25 sales, that is £55.50 to £97.00 a month depending on the provider, and the cheapest headline rate is not always the cheapest bill.

Fees read from each provider's own UK page on 1 November 2026.

Which UK providers let you take card payments on your phone

Tap to Pay uses the NFC chip already in your phone, so the customer taps their card, phone or watch on the back of your handset. These are the providers that publish a Tap to Pay price for UK businesses.

Provider names link to the page each figure was read from. Tide states that its transaction and subscription fees will increase on 1 December 2026. Lopay’s pricing page says its figures are accurate as of 30 May 2024. Tyl by NatWest offers Tap to Pay at £0 a month (no hire or PCI fee) on iPhone XS or later and Android 11 or later, with published rates of 1.39% + 5p on UK and European personal cards for businesses under £50,000 a year (quote-only above that; tylbynatwest.com/card-machines/pricing-fees, checked 1 November 2026). Dojo also lists Tap to Pay on iPhone (Accept contactless on an iPhone with the Dojo app, no extra hardware and no contract), with pricing set by your Dojo plan.

What it costs a £5,000 a month shop

Take the house example: a shop taking £5,000 a month on cards, average sale £25, so 200 payments. The cost is £5,000 × the percentage, plus 200 × any fixed pence fee, plus any monthly fee.

On £25 sales, Lopay Essential (£55.50) and Revolut Business (£60.00) undercut SumUp (£84.50) by £24.50 to £29.00 a month. Two catches. Their low rates cover UK consumer Visa and Mastercard only, so every Amex, business or overseas card costs more (Lopay: +1% for Amex, corporate and international cards; Revolut: Amex 1.7% + 10p; any other card 2.6% + 10p). And Lopay Essential payouts are slower: free Thursday payouts on Essential (next-day payouts need the 0.99% Standard account).

SumUp has a middle option: Payments Plus at £19/month brings domestic consumer cards down to 0.99%, so the same £5,000 costs £5,000 × 0.99% + £19 = £68.50, if every card is a domestic consumer card. International, corporate and premium cards, Amex included, stay at 1.69% on Payments Plus.

Small sales flip the answer

A fixed fee per tap is cheap on a £25 sale and expensive on a £5 coffee. At a £5 average the same £5,000 is 1,000 payments, and Revolut's 10p fee alone is 1,000 × 10p = £100.00. That takes Revolut to £140.00 and Tide to £185.00, while SumUp stays at £84.50 because it has no fixed fee. The break-even average sale against SumUp is the fixed fee divided by the rate gap: 8p ÷ (1.69% − 0.79%) = £8.89 for Lopay and 10p ÷ (1.69% − 0.8%) = £11.24 for Revolut. Our verdict: if most of your sales are under about £9, pick a percentage-only provider (SumUp, Square or Zettle). Above about £11, both Lopay and Revolut win, provided most customers pay with UK personal cards.

Can I use my phone as a card reader? The requirements

Apple states that Tap to Pay on iPhone needs an iPhone XS or later, plus a supported payment app and the latest version of iOS, and accepts physical debit and credit cards, Apple Pay and other digital wallets. Android support is set by each provider rather than by Google, so the minimum version varies:

Taking card payments on an Android phone

Check two settings before you sign up: NFC must be switched on, and your Android version must meet the provider's minimum, which varies more than most people expect. Square asks for NFC and Android 9 or later, Zettle for Android 8.0 and above with NFC and Google Play services, Lopay for Android 10 or higher with NFC enabled, and SumUp for NFC and Android 11 or higher. An older Android phone that fails SumUp's check may still pass Square's or Zettle's.

When you still need a card machine

• Big tickets. Above the £100 contactless limit (UK Finance) a card needs PIN verification, and Square on Android cannot take card payments above it at all.
• Chip-only cards. A phone reads contactless only, with no chip slot, so a customer whose card has no contactless symbol cannot pay.
• Printed receipts and a busy counter. A phone has no printer and is tied up while it is taking a payment, and its battery is shared with everything else you use it for.

If any of those apply, a 4G handheld terminal is the better tool: see our guide to mobile card machines. If you mean taking a card number from a customer over a phone call, that is a different product (a virtual terminal), covered in how to take card payments over the phone.

Should you switch to Tap to Pay?

If you already pay a flat 1.69% to 1.75% on a card reader, moving to the same provider's Tap to Pay saves nothing on fees: SumUp, Square and Zettle charge the same rate either way. The saving only comes from the lower-rate providers or from a negotiated terminal deal once you pass a few thousand pounds a month. Send us a recent statement through our free statement review and we will tell you if a change is worth it, or say stay put.

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