What is the cheapest way to take card payments?

There is no single cheapest processor for everyone. The cheapest setup depends on two things: whether you sell in person or online, and how much you take each month. Here is the honest breakdown.

In person, with no hardware: the cheapest start is tap-to-pay on a phone. The free Square app and Stripe Tap to Pay both turn a modern iPhone or Android into a contactless reader, so a customer taps their card or phone straight onto yours. You buy nothing. Typical in person rates run about 2.5 to 2.7 percent plus a small fixed fee per sale, with no monthly charge on the entry plans.

In person, with a reader: if you want a dedicated card machine, SumUp, Square and PayPal Zettle all sell a simple reader for a low one-off price, often under $50, with no monthly rental. SumUp is usually the lowest per-transaction rate for in person at roughly 1.7 to 2.6 percent. The reader pairs with your phone, so you still avoid a monthly bill.

Online: the cheapest way to accept payments online is to run them straight through a real processor like Stripe or PayPal, usually around 2.9 percent plus about 30 cents per transaction. Watch out for website builders and marketplaces that add their own extra percentage on top of the processor. Taking the payment directly, on a site you control, avoids that second cut.

Over the phone: for a card read out over the phone you use the same processor account and key it in manually as a virtual terminal. Keyed-in sales cost a little more than a tap, usually around 3.4 to 3.5 percent plus a fixed fee, because the card is not present. Square, Stripe and PayPal all include a virtual terminal, so you do not need separate hardware.

What about free? No card processor is truly free. Every one charges a percentage plus a small fixed fee, because they carry the card-network and fraud costs. Offers of a free card machine usually claw the cost back through a higher rate or a monthly minimum, so read the per-transaction number, not the headline. The nearest thing to free is tap-to-pay with no hardware to buy, but you still pay the per-sale percentage.

High volume: once you take a lot each month, a plan with a small monthly fee and a lower percentage can beat a no-monthly plan. Do the math on your own turnover: multiply your monthly card sales by each rate and add any monthly fee. That comparison, not a brand name, tells you the cheapest option for you.

Where Instinctor fits, honestly: we are not a payment processor and we do not beat Stripe or Square on their rates. What we do is build card payments straight into the website and online booking you already need, at one flat monthly fee. So if you were about to pay for a website subscription and then bolt payments on, you skip stacking a separate site bill on top of your processing fees. You still pay the processor its normal percentage, but not a second company for the site around it.