SumUp vs Square: Business Card Reader Showdown

SumUp and Square are two major players in the payment taking market and, according to our in-depth analysis, Square is the best of the two.

Off our audience research findings and backed by our nearly 15 years of experience in the market, we know business owners look for card machines they can easily integrate and have support with. Square ticks those boxes with gusto: its reader ranks among the best card machines for small businesses and the provider itself scores an impressive 4.4/5 in our research. Not that SumUp is a weak contender: it offers great connectivity on its readers, landing a 4.2/5 score.

If you’re unsure about which to choose, simply fill in our free comparison tool to receive bespoke quotes from our trusted providers. However, if you want the specifics on SumUp and Square, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve researched both providers and have the gist at hand, so read on.

SumUp vs Square: Battle breakdown

According to our research, we found that Square has cheaper hardware, more third-party integrations, and better customer support when compared with SumUp. For its part, SumUp does offer cheaper transaction fees and boasts better customer reviews online than Zettle. Overall, Square’s 4.4/5 score outdoes SumUp’s 4.2/5.

Both providers offer native EPOS systems along with their card machines, but Square edges out SumUp by offering its EPOS service for free. SumUp charges a minimum of £9 per month for a similar offering.

Square’s payout time is also way faster than SumUp’s. While it pledges to transfer funds by the next working day, SumUp can take up to five working days to do so. Those factors, combined with Square’s plentiful features, make it one of the best mobile card machine providers for small businesses.

Best value: Square

While neither of the brands charge monthly fees, Square offers its reporting tools for free. SumUp, on the other hand, charges £29 per month for this feature. Despite this, SumUp outperforms Square in price in our research, scoring 3.7/5 and therefore narrowly beating Square’s 3.3/5. With these results, the fine print makes all the difference.

For starters, Square’s transaction fee for in-person payments is 1.75%, pricier than SumUp’s 1.69%. It is worth noting that they both charge 2.5% for keyed-in and invoice transactions. On the other hand, Square’s hardware starts at a lower price (£16 + VAT against SumUp’s £39 + VAT), which helps keep the initial investment down and makes it appealing to small business owners.

However, when it comes to card readers, SumUp gives Square a run for its money. SumUp has a mid-tier offering, Solo, which retails at £79 + VAT. Also, by having mobile data in two of its three card readers, SumUp has better connectivity than Square. This allows you to keep your business running without being dependent on Wi-Fi or your phone’s data. In contrast, none of Square’s two readers come with this feature, which is essential to mobile business owners.

That said, by packing plentiful features without charging monthly fees, Square offers better overall value than SumUp, scoring 4.4/5 against SumUp’s 4.2/5. Square also provides faster payouts than SumUp, While SumUp promises to transfer funds in up to five working days, Square can get them to you by the next working day, which benefits business owners who depend on dynamic cash flow

Best for features: Square

Our research shows that Square offers more overall features than SumUp, so it wins this round – something reflected in its 4.7/5 score in this category in our research, against SumUp’s 3.7/5. Both companies provide sales reports, easy invoicing, and a native ecommerce platform. However, Square enables team and inventory management tools, unlike SumUp. Square also packs countless integrations, while SumUp only integrates with 11. This makes Square a better fit for business owners keen on syncing up many segments of their ventures. That said, SumUp has a plus in that it accepts 10 different major cards, which is six more than Square.

Best for compliance: SumUp

SumUp beats Square in compliance due the credit checks it runs on new merchants and the mobile data it packs on its readers, which Square doesn’t do. Accordingly, SumUp scores 4.6/5 in this category while Square gets 3.5/5. For its part, Square has a faster payout time than SumUp, transferring your money by the next working day. SumUp takes up to five working days to do so. However, both providers encrypt their users’ data to prevent fraud and comply with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standard, which is great because this means they take steps to secure the data of the transactions they process.

Best for customer support: Square

Square secures a victory here, scoring 5/5 against SumUp’s 3.5/5. Both providers offer support between 9am and 5pm on weekdays, via phone, and email. They also provide a knowledge base while lacking a community centre. However, unlike Square, SumUp’s support is not contactable via live chat and that proved fatal in this category. In fact, SumUp is the only mobile merchant account we looked at during our research that lacks this feature – a real Achilles' heel.

Zettle vs. SumUp vs. Square

These providers put up a good fight against each other on several fronts. At £16 + VAT, Square has a cheaper entry reader than Zettle (£29 + VAT) and SumUp (£39 + VAT). Befitting the standards of the mobile card reader market, none of them charge fixed account fees.

Square and Zettle offer the same amount of reporting tools (five), beating SumUp’s three. However, Square beats both Zettle and SumUp for integrations: it offers countless, which is better than Zettle’s 21 and SumUp’s 11. This is a great feature to have if you’re a business owner keen on syncing up many parts of your venture.

By being PCI certified, Zettle is more secure than SumUp and Square, which are only PCI compliant. That said, they all offer their compliance procedures at no extra cost. Accordingly, Zettle bags a whopping 4.8/5 score for compliance in our research, trumping SumUp’s 4.6/5 and Square’s 3.5/5. Zettle also ties with Square for its number of support channels (three), besting SumUp, which has only two.

Alternatives to SumUp and Square

Revolut and Tyl are competitors worth a mention. Revolut scores 4.8/5 overall in our research, topping our mobile card machine provider analysis. At 0.8% + 2p, Revolut has a cheaper in-person transaction fee than both SumUp and Square. Also, with 16 integrations, Revolut beats SumUp while losing to Square, which has countless.

With a 4.4/5 overall score, Tyl ties with Square in our research. However, Square’s countless integrations made it score higher than Tyl for features. Unlike SumUp and Square, Tyl usually rents its readers for a monthly subscription – the minimum being £6.99 + VAT. This makes it a better fit for medium-sized and large businesses, for which the subscription won’t be bank-breaking. However, like those providers, Tyl lacks multi-currency support.

Our methodology

To find out the best between SumUp and Square, we researched them in five categories: price, features, compliance, customer support, and customer score. We also looked at four of their direct competitors to know how SumUp and Square compare against the wider market. We then consolidated the data into the scores we discussed throughout the article.

Square beats SumUp in two categories: features and customer support. In the first, we looked into the providers’ integrations and reporting tools. In the second, we scored them based on their number of support channels as well as the quality of their knowledge base.

Securing these categories proved to be crucial for Square’s victory, as they are the most heavily weighted ones in our mobile card machine provider analysis. This reflects the insights we gathered by interviewing business owners to discover their priorities when choosing a payment taking platform. This also explains why, despite not beating SumUp in most categories, Square wins.