Stripe, Shopify, Square, PayPal, GoCardless, Worldpay and Adyen — what each really costs to take a card online in Britain, why UK rates sit closer to 1.5% than the American 2.9%, and how owning your own checkout keeps more of every sale.
🇬🇧 UK edition. Selling from elsewhere? Read the US, Australia or India version.
Payment processing is one of the few costs a UK store pays on every single sale. The good news for British merchants: thanks to EU-era caps on card interchange — carried into UK law — online card rates here sit far below the United States. Where an American store pays around 2.9% + 30¢, a UK store taking UK consumer cards pays closer to 1.5%. But the headline rate is still the wrong thing to shop on. Here is how the major options compare for a UK business in 2026, and how to think about the number that actually matters: the total cost of running and converting a sale.
These are standard published UK online rates for UK consumer cards. They vary by card type, plan and volume — commercial and non-UK cards cost more — so check current pricing before you commit. As a starting point:
| Provider | Typical UK online rate | Best known for |
|---|---|---|
| Square UK | 1.4% + 25p | Simple flat pricing, POS + online |
| Stripe UK | 1.5% + 20p | Developer payment infrastructure |
| Shopify Payments | 2% → 1.5% + 25p | All-in-one store platform |
| Mollie | 1.2% + 20p | European payment methods |
| GoCardless | 1% + 20p (cap £4) | Direct Debit / subscriptions |
| Worldpay | from 1.3% + 20p | Established UK merchant accounts |
| Adyen | interchange++ (~1%) | Enterprise / high volume |
| PayPal UK | 2.9% + 30p | Consumer wallet & recognition |
Looking only at the percentage misleads, because most providers add a fixed pence fee too. On a £100 UK card sale:
The fixed fee bites hardest on small baskets — 20–30p is 1.5% of a £20 order but only 0.03% of a £1,000 one — so a shop selling £15 accessories has a very different effective rate from one selling £900 furniture. And note how wide the spread is: PayPal's 2.9% is nearly double Stripe's or Square's, because PayPal still prices on a legacy flat rate rather than the capped UK interchange its rivals pass through.
The developer benchmark, and highly competitive in Britain. Standard UK consumer cards are 1.5% + 20p; EEA cards 2.5% + 20p; international cards 3.15% + 20p, plus 2% where currency conversion is needed. Premium and commercial UK cards sit outside the cap at around 2.8% + 20p. There is no monthly fee for standard processing. What you are really buying is the surrounding infrastructure — Checkout, Payment Links, Billing, Connect, Radar fraud tools and APIs covering 100+ payment methods — which is why Stripe is the default for SaaS, marketplaces, subscriptions and headless stores.
Shopify is a full ecommerce platform with payments built in. UK card rates fall as you climb the plans: Basic 2% + 25p, Grow 1.7% + 25p, Advanced 1.5% + 25p, with Plus lower still. Those plans cost £25, £65 and £344 a month on monthly billing (about £19, £49 and £259 billed annually).
The catch worth knowing: if you use any processor other than Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own transaction fee on top — 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, 0.2% on Plus. That surcharge is what keeps most Shopify merchants on Shopify Payments, and it is exactly the platform lock-in a self-owned checkout avoids.
Square has the lowest headline online rate of the mainstream options at 1.4% + 25p for UK cards (2.5% + 25p for non-UK), with no monthly fee, no contract and no minimums on its free plan. Its real strength is unifying a physical till and an online shop under one flat price — for a business selling in a shop, at markets and online, that single system can be worth more than shaving a few pence off the online rate.
PayPal is less a rate to compare than a conversion decision: at 2.9% + 30p its UK commercial rate is high next to capped-interchange rivals, but millions of British shoppers trust its wallet, so many stores run it alongside Stripe rather than instead of it. GoCardless is the UK favourite for invoices and subscriptions, taking payment by Direct Debit at 1% + 20p capped at £4 — cheaper than cards on anything above about £230, and far less prone to failed-payment churn. Mollie prices UK consumer cards at 1.2% + 20p with strong European method coverage. Adyen uses transparent interchange++ (roughly 1% all-in on UK consumer cards) and is built for enterprise scale. Worldpay and Barclaycard are the traditional incumbents — competitive "from" rates but bespoke quotes, monthly minimums and multi-year contracts rather than published pay-as-you-go pricing. And SumUp and Dojo lead on in-person card readers; online they are weaker (SumUp 2.5% standard, or 0.99% on a £19/month plan; Dojo 1.9% + 5p).
The pattern: the market splits into payment infrastructure you build on (Stripe, Mollie, Adyen) and platforms that bundle the store around the payment (Shopify, Square). Neither is better — they answer different questions.
A bare percentage hides most of the bill. Alongside processing, a store pays some mix of ecommerce software, hosting, apps, fraud tools, subscription billing, chargebacks, accounting and shipping. A Shopify merchant pays the monthly plan on top of processing; a Stripe user pays nothing monthly but may add Billing or Tax. And the capped UK rate only covers UK consumer cards — sell to shoppers abroad and Stripe's 3.15% international, PayPal's +1.99% or Shopify's +1% can matter far more than the gap between 1.4% and 1.5% at home. The cheapest processor is not automatically the cheapest way to run a store.
The biggest shift in ecommerce is separating the storefront from the commerce engine: instead of "Shopify site → Shopify checkout", a store runs a fast custom front end that calls a commerce API and a payment provider directly. That is the model Claude CMS builds. Your pages stay self-hosted and quick; checkout is Stripe, connected to your own Stripe account, so money lands with you at UK rates and there is no platform taking a slice — and none of the third-party-gateway surcharge a hosted platform would add for bringing your own processor.
The keys stay yours, too. When you connect Stripe (or any service) to a Claude CMS store, the credential is sealed in Claude CMS Vault — encrypted on arrival, usable to run your checkout, never exposed. The connections hub lists the payment, shipping and email services a store can plug into the same way.
For a UK store in 2026 the headline fee is only one input, and it is already low by world standards. The best choice is the one with the lowest total cost of running and converting your customers — and if you want capped-interchange, own-your-own-Stripe economics without wiring it together yourself, that is the point of building the store with Claude.
New to this? Start with our guide to setting up your Claude ecommerce website — from an empty site to a working store with Stripe connected to your own account.
UK and EEA consumer card interchange is capped (about 0.2% debit, 0.3% credit), so processors price UK consumer cards far below the US norm — Stripe UK 1.5% + 20p, Square 1.4% + 25p, versus roughly 2.9% + 30¢ in America. Commercial and non-UK cards are outside the cap and cost more.
About £1.65 (Square), £1.70 (Stripe), £1.75 (Shopify Advanced) up to £2.25 (Shopify Basic) and £3.20 (PayPal); £1.20 by Direct Debit via GoCardless, capped at £4.
Yes — a third-party gateway instead of Shopify Payments adds 2% (Basic), 1% (Grow), 0.6% (Advanced) or 0.2% (Plus) on top of the processor's rate. A headless store on its own Stripe account pays no such surcharge.
Direct Debit via GoCardless (1% + 20p, cap £4) usually beats cards on payments above about £230 and cuts failed-payment churn. For one-off cards, Square and Stripe lead.