Best Online Payment Systems for Small Businesses 2026

Online shopping accounts for around 26% of UK retail sales, according to the Office for National Statistics, and has been steadily increasing over the past five years. So, if you’re a small business looking to cash in on the action, you’ll need a reliable merchant account provider for taking payments online.

Based on our research and testing, takepayments offers the best online payment gateway for small businesses. It’s an affordable solution, since takepayments offers custom pricing to match your budget, and its online payment gateway integrates with over 50 popular shopping carts, including WooCommerce and Magento.

takepayments’ affordability also earned it a spot in our list of the top credit card machines for small businesses.

However, takepayments doesn’t offer a website building tool, so if your business doesn’t have a website yet, you might prefer providers like Square or SumUp, which offer an online store builder plus payment processor. Read on to learn more about how the best providers compare or use our comparison tool to generate bespoke quotes tailored to your specific needs.

Top Systems for Taking Payments Online: Overview

Let’s start with an at-a-glance view of our top six merchant services for taking online payments, with information on how we’ve rated them and what their transaction fees are.

1. takepayments: Best For Businesses With Varying Transaction Sizes

takepayments offers several systems for merchants who need to take online payments, meaning it can suit a variety of business types.

takepayments online payment solutions

• Online payment gateway (integrates into existing website)
• Pay by link (send to customers via email)
• QR code ordering (QR code links to online menu and payment page)

What did we like about takepayments’ online payment system?

takepayments caters specifically to small businesses, and offers competitive custom transaction rates, designed to match your transaction volume and revenue. This can work out cheaper than using a provider with set fees and rates, especially if your business has a high volume of monthly card transactions.

If you plan on selling through a website, takepayments offers an online payment gateway that integrates with 50 popular online shopping carts, including WooCommerce and Magento, so there’s a good chance it will work with your existing website.

This is likely to result in a faster setup and lower development costs, as you won’t need to carry out custom coding or complex workarounds.

takepayments also offers a solution for hospitality businesses, thanks to its QR code ordering system, beepaid. This gives you access to a unique QR code linked to a menu page and an online payment page. takepayments will build all this for you, removing a lot of the hassle.

Lastly, if you offer services, you can also be paid via invoices, thanks to takepayments’ pay-by-link service. This removes the need for a website, since you can simply generate links and branded emails via takepayments’ Merchant Management System.

Reasons to avoid takepayments

• Complex integrations: We don’t recommend takepayments’ online payment gateway to small businesses with limited technical skills, since integrating it into your existing website might require some minimal coding. If that’s you, you’ll find it easier to work with a provider that offers an online store builder as well as payment solutions, like SumUp, Square or Shopify. This removes the need for you to integrate a separate payment page into your website, since the work has already been done for you.
• Limited ecommerce features: We also don’t recommend takepayments for retail businesses that primarily sell online, since while takepayments offers online solutions, it doesn’t specialise in ecommerce. Once again, you’ll be better off with a provider that’s also an online store builder.

2. Worldpay: Best for High Volume Sellers

Worldpay offers two package solutions for selling online via payment gateway or link, and has custom pricing for businesses that process over £75,000 a year in card transactions.

Worldpay online payment solutions

• Online payment gateway (integrates into existing website)
• Pay by link (send to customers via email)

What did we like about Worldpay’s online payment system?

Worldpay is a highly trusted merchant services provider and is used by large enterprises as well as small businesses. It provides merchant services globally and offers specialised solutions for businesses selling online internationally.

This includes accepting over 120 currencies and allowing you to accept regional payment methods, on top of global ones like Apple Pay.

While Worldpay previously offered two bundled online payment solutions — the Simplicity Payment Gateway and Worldpay eCommerce — the company has stopped actively advertising the Simplicity plan on its website. Now, Worldpay eCommerce is the primary online payment solution, providing an online gateway, pay-by-link functionality for invoices, and hosted or integrated checkout options.

Its eCommerce payment gateway that integrates with popular ecommerce platforms like Shopify and OpenCart, offering versatile options for website or hosted checkout. It comes with no monthly fees and transaction rates starting from 1.3% + £0.20, making it a competitive option for low-volume merchants.

In comparison, Stripe typically charges around 1.5% + £0.20 for UK cards (online) on its standard pricing, with no monthly fee. This means your 1.3% + £0.20 entry rate undercuts Stripe’s standard online rate, particularly for low-volume merchants.

Reasons to avoid Worldpay

• Long contracts: Worldpay has a contract length of 18 months, which is six months longer than the average of 12 months. This doesn’t offer businesses a lot of flexibility and, although you can terminate your contract early, this will incur exit fees. For this reason, we don’t recommend Worldpay to new businesses still figuring out what services they need, or ones that don’t want to be tied to a provider.
• Hidden fees: Additionally, although Worldpay offers low transaction fees, a contract with them often comes with a lot of additional monthly fees, which make it an overall expensive option. You’re likely to pay fees of at least £5 per month for PCI compliance, as well as ones for fraud, maintaining fraud protections and servicing your account.
• Retail-focused: Lastly, Worldpay doesn’t have a QR code or online ordering solution for hospitality businesses and is heavily geared towards retailers. For hospitality-friendly merchant services providers, we recommend takepayments, Square or SumUp.

3. Square: Best for Businesses After an All-In-One Solution

Square is a zero-contract provider that offers a host of solutions for taking payments online, from a free online retail store or online ordering store builder, to invoices and QR code ordering.

Square online payments solutions

• Online store builder with integrated payment gateway (suitable for services, retail and hospitality)
• Invoices (pay by link via email)
• QR code ordering

What did we like about Square’s online payment system?

Square offers an all-in-one solution when it comes to taking payments online. It has an online store builder that comes with a Square payment gateway, eliminating the need for you to integrate one into your website — no coding necessary. It aims to cut out the hassle of keeping tabs on your online transactions, letting you track all your sales from one place.

As well as being easy to create and use, Square’s online store builder comes with no monthly fees, besides transaction fees, making it an affordable solution. You can, however, upgrade to a paid online store for £20 to £64 per month, which we recommend to small businesses that are experiencing increasing online sales.

Square has solutions for retail, hospitality and services businesses like salons, making it one of the most versatile providers on the market. Services businesses can also benefit from Square’s invoicing tool, which, like the online store builder, has a free plan or a paid plan at £20 per month, which comes with additional features like batch-sending and custom email layouts.

Square is straightforward to set up, too. Provider accounts can be approved instantly or within 24-48 hours, allowing merchants to get selling quickly. In contrast, Worldpay takes around one to three business days to setup, making Square the more convenient option for new businesses, sole traders or anyone needing to start taking payments at short notice.

If you like the look of Square’s free tools, but think the price of the paid premium versions is a little high, don’t worry. Square’s free tools aren’t just test versions designed to make you upgrade to the paid version, they’re fully functional. Plus, Square is fully transparent with its pricing and doesn’t come with hidden fees (PCI compliance is handled at no extra charge for example), so what you see is what you’ll pay, no more.

Reasons to avoid Square

• Relatively steep transaction fees: Square’s transaction fees are a little on the high side, to compensate for the lack of monthly fees, and they don’t go down by much if you’re on a paid plan. Square does offer custom transaction rates for high-volume sellers, but its threshold for what qualifies as high volume is higher than Worldpay or takepayments, so if you’re looking for the cheapest rates, those are the providers we recommend.
• Standard website builder: Square’s online store builder is also quite basic when it comes to design choices and customisation, so if you want to create a unique store, we recommend Shopify. Plus, it doesn’t support multi-currency payments, so international sellers will do better with Worldpay.

4. Stripe: Best for Businesses Handling Sensitive Data

Stripe offers a payment gateway that businesses can embed directly into their website, and advanced fraud detection that detects unusual patterns in payment flow.

Stripe online payment solutions

• Payment gateway (embedded into website, customers stay on the same page)
• Invoices (send emails with link to payment page)
• Pay-by-link (send users to a payment page to sell limited products or subscription, no website required)

What did we like about Stripe’s online payment system?

Stripe is an affordable option for small businesses with a low transaction volume. It doesn’t charge monthly fees for the vast majority of its services, instead, services are charged as an extra percentage cut or fixed fee on transactions.

This makes Stripe different from many similar providers as it doesn’t require a monthly subscription, lowering the barrier to entry for small or new businesses.

This is also the case for Stripe’s excellent fraud prevention software. Stripe’s proprietary anti-fraud system, Radar, costs a fixed fee of £0.04 per screened transaction. It uses machine learning to detect unusual patterns in transactions and stop fraud.

Besides Radar, Stripe has a few other programs to boost security, including customer identity verification, which costs £1.25 per verification.

In terms of its online payments solutions, Stripe offers a payment gateway page you can embed into your existing website. This means your customers can easily pay there and then, without the annoyance of getting redirected somewhere else.

You can also customise the logo, images and colour to make the image seamlessly align with your website. This is very useful for online businesses keen on providing a good customer experience, but matters less if the bulk of your activities take place in a bricks-and-mortar shop.

Stripe also has an invoicing tool, which allows you to email payment links to customers (0.4%-0.5% per paid invoice) and a pay-by-link tool, which is a solution for selling limited products or subscriptions online without a website. You can share the link with customers on any platform and they’ll be taken to a payment page.

Reasons to avoid Stripe

• Fees can add up: We don’t recommend Stripe to businesses with a high transaction volume. Since most of Stripe’s payment services are charged solely per transaction, fees can really add up. Stripe’s standard transaction fees are also not particularly low, at 1.5% + £0.20 per standard UK card. This is similar to what Worldpay and Square charge but, with Stripe, there are no customised fees for high-volume sellers.
• Retail-focused: Stripe is also heavily focused on facilitating payments for retail businesses or those selling subscriptions, and doesn’t have systems in place for hospitality businesses, like online ordering.
• Longer transfer funds: Lastly, Stripe takes a little longer than its competitors to transfer your funds to your business bank account. Most competitors now transfer funds the next working day but, with Stripe, it can take up to three days. However, for an extra 1% fee on the payout volume, you can receive your funds in minutes. Depending on the payout amount, this can be an expensive option.

5. SumUp: Best for New Businesses

SumUp is an all-in-one platform that’s easy to sign up to and comes with no contract or monthly fees, making it a great solution for new businesses looking to take payments online.

SumUp online payment solutions

• Online payment gateway (integrate into existing website via plugin or API)
• Online store builder with integrated payment gateway
• Invoices (send payment links via email)
• Pay-by-link (send payments links to customers on any platform)

What did we like about SumUp’s online payment system?

It offers a plethora of ways to take payments, including a free online store builder which comes with SumUp’s payment gateway pre-integrated into it. This is means there’s no fussing around with code or plugins, although SumUp also has these option for technically savvy businesses.

SumUp also has an invoicing tool, which has a free version and a £7 per month Pro version. This lowers transaction fees from 2.5% to 1.25%, and allows you to customise the design of your invoices and create ones in different languages.

Lastly, there’s a pay-by-link feature which, like similar services offered by competitors, allows you to send payment links to customers on any platform and is a great options for startups selling on social media.

All of SumUp’s tools for taking payments come with no monthly fees and a transaction fee of 2.5%. However, if you sign up to SumUp One for £19 per month, this lowers transaction fees to 0.99% (including for invoices and online store payments).

It’s an option worth considering if you plan on becoming a frequent online seller, since SumUp’s 2.5% transaction fee is very high and will eat into your profits the more transactions you process.

Reasons to avoid SumUp

• Relatively high transaction fees: As we’ve established, on its free plan, SumUp’s transaction fees are quite high, plus it doesn’t offer customised transaction fees for high-volume sellers. Your only option to lower fees is to sign up for the £19 per month SumUp One plan. The 0.99% transaction fee you get for doing this is actually quite low compared with average online fees, so you’re not getting a bad deal.
• Not catered to large ecommerce stores: That said, SumUp’s products will soon feel very limiting if you plan on growing your business. For example, its online store builder is very basic and it doesn’t have an advanced version for larger businesses, unlike its rivals Square and Shopify. If you plan on building an ecommerce business, we suggest you choose a provider up to the task, like Shopify or Worldpay.

6. Shopify: Best for Ecommerce Retailers

Shopify is the best ecommerce platform for small businesses. So, if you’re an online retail business, we strongly recommend Shopify if you want to simplify and use the same provider for both running your website and processing transactions.

Shopify online payment systems

• Online store with integrated payment gateway (can be connected to social media for omnichannel selling)

What did we like about Shopify’s online payment system?

Shopify has its own payment processing service called Shopify Payments, which works seamlessly with Shopify websites. It is possible to integrate third-party payment processors into a Shopify website, but this incurs extra transaction fees of 0.2% to 2%, on top of third-party fees, so choosing Shopify Payments is the most affordable choice.

Another advantage to using Shopify for online payments and ecommerce is that it’s a highly scalable option, capable of accommodating even large enterprises, so the chances you’ll outgrow it are very slim.

You can start very small, with Shopify’s £5 per month Starter plan. This allows you to sell on social media, email or SMS, with links that lead to a basic product page and payment page.

The downside is that transaction fees are 5%, which is very high, so it’s not for regular sellers. Transaction fees quickly go down to 2% + £0.25 on the £19 per month Basic plan, and high volume sellers on the £1,800 per month Plus get custom rates.

If Shopify’s monthly fees seem quite high, don’t forget that, unlike with a lot of the other providers on this list, you aren’t just paying for online payment processing, but for an online store that includes advanced reporting and marketing tools, and can be used as a hub for omnichannel selling.

Reasons to avoid Shopify

• Higher price point: Shopify isn’t a cheap option, in terms of both its monthly fees and its transaction fees. The price jump between the £49 per month Shopify plan and £259 Advanced plan is pretty steep for most businesses. You can find a cheaper online store builder and payment processor in Square.
• Retail focused: Additionally, Shopify is purely geared to retail businesses and really doesn’t have any solutions for hospitality or services businesses. For that, we’d recommend takepayments or Square.

Online Payment Gateway vs Ecommerce Website vs Payment Processor: What’s the Difference?

It’s common to get confused between online payment gateways, ecommerce websites and payment processors, since all three are involved in accepting payments online. Yet, while they may seem similar, each serves a distinct purpose in the payment ecosystem.

In the table below, we break down the main differences between these systems to help you understand which option best fits your needs.

Buying Guide: How To Choose the Best Online Payment System for Your Business

Online payment systems aren’t one-size-fits-all. Each provider offers different fees, features and areas of specialization, making it important to choose the right one for your business. To help you find the best fit, here are some key questions to consider when browsing the market.

• What is my business’s sales volume? Your sales volume will affect which payment systems are the most cost-efficient for you. For example, high-volume businesses may benefit from gateways with lower transaction fees, while low-volume businesses might want to prioritize flexible pay-as-you-go pricing structures.
• How much will it cost me? You’ll need to grasp a firm understanding of how much each online payment system could cost you in order to compare prices accurately. This includes checking for transaction rates, monthly fees and hidden fees like chargeback costs or early cancellation fees.
• What security features do I need? Depending on the industry your business is in and the types of payment you accept, you may require a different set of security features. Key safeguards to look out for include PCI compliance, tokenization, 3D Secure and fraud detection capabilities.
• What integrations do I require? Syncing your online payment system with the rest of your payment ecosystem will help you save time, reduce errors and reduce manual data entry. Therefore, it’s important to only consider platforms that are able to seamlessly integrate with your POS, ecommerce or accounting software.
• What payment methods do I prioritize?  Consider how your customers prefer to pay, whether it’s credit/debit cards, digital wallets, bank transfers or buy-now-pay-later options. Supporting the right mix of payment methods can reduce cart abandonment and enhance the overall customer experience.

How Did We Test Online Payment Gateways?