Payment Link vs Card Machine vs Payment Gateway: What Is the Difference?
There are three main ways a UK business can accept card payments: payment links, card machines, and payment gateways. Each suits different business models, customer interactions, and technical setups. Choosing the wrong method does not stop you taking money, but it can cost you more, add friction for customers, or leave gaps in your reconciliation. We have set out what each method is, when it earns its place, and what it really costs, so you can match the method to the way your customers actually pay you.
Payment Links
What Is a Payment Link?
A payment link is a URL you send to a customer (by email, SMS, WhatsApp, or invoice) that takes them to a hosted checkout page where they enter their card details and pay. You do not need a website, an API integration, or a card machine. You generate the link from a provider dashboard, set the amount, and send it.
We rate payment links the right call for service businesses that invoice clients, freelancers collecting deposits, and any business where the payment happens after the work is agreed but the customer is not in the room. Picture a tradesperson texting a link the moment a job signs off, and getting paid before they have packed the van.
Who Offers Payment Links?
Most major providers offer payment links as a feature within their broader platform:
- Stripe Payment Links: no-code checkout pages, supports recurring payments, works with Stripe’s full suite
- Square Invoices: invoice-based payment links with automatic reminders
- SumUp Payment Links: simple shareable links, 2.5% on online payments
- GoCardless Instant Bank Pay: bank-to-bank payment links, no card involved
- PayPal.Me and PayPal Invoicing: widely recognised, useful if customers have PayPal accounts
Payment Link Costs
Payment link transactions are card-not-present, so fees are higher than in-person rates. Stripe charges 1.5% + 20p for UK cards via a payment link. SumUp charges 2.5%. Square charges 2.5% on a payment taken through a Square Invoice, well above the 1.75% it charges at the counter. GoCardless Instant Bank Pay charges 1% + 20p, capped at £4.
Card Machines
What Is a Card Machine?
A card machine (also called a card reader or payment terminal) accepts card payments in person: the customer taps, inserts, or swipes their card at the device. This is the standard payment method for physical retail, hospitality, and any business where the customer is present at the point of sale.
Card machines come in three main forms: countertop (fixed, plugged into the till), portable (wireless, used tableside or at the counter), and mobile (paired with a phone, used at markets and events).
Who Offers Card Machines?
- SumUp Solo Lite / Solo: 1.69%, no monthly fee, no contract
- Square Reader: 1.75%, no monthly fee, no contract
- Zettle Reader 2: 1.75%, no monthly fee, no contract
- myPOS Go 2: 1.10% + £0.07, instant settlement
- Dojo Go: from 1.2%, £20–25/month rental, 12-month minimum
- takepayments: negotiated rates, from £15/month, contract required
Card Machine Costs
In-person card rates are lower than online because the fraud risk is lower, and we would not pay online rates for a counter you could serve with a £19 reader. The typical range is 1.1–1.75% for flat-rate providers, or 0.8–1.3% effective rate for IC+ acquirers at £10,000+ per month. Hardware costs range from £19 (Square Reader) to £99 (SumUp Solo) purchased outright, or £20 to £25/month for rented terminals from Dojo. Unless you process enough to earn a negotiated rate, we would buy the hardware outright rather than rent; a £25 monthly rental is £300 a year for a device you could own for £39.
Payment Gateways
What Is a Payment Gateway?
A payment gateway is the technical infrastructure that connects your website or app to the card schemes and acquirers, enabling customers to pay online. Unlike a payment link (which uses someone else’s hosted page), a payment gateway integrates into your own checkout so the customer stays on your site throughout the transaction.
Payment gateways can be:
- Hosted checkout: The customer is redirected to a payment provider’s page to enter card details (e.g. PayPal Checkout, Stripe Checkout). Lower development effort; less control over design.
- Embedded checkout: Card details are entered in a form on your site, with the sensitive data handled by the provider’s JavaScript (e.g. Stripe Elements, Braintree). More control; requires developer work.
- Full API integration: Your server sends payment data directly to the gateway API. Maximum flexibility; requires significant development resource and PCI DSS scope awareness.
Who Offers Payment Gateways?
- Stripe: most widely used, 1.5% + 20p UK cards, the deepest developer API of the group
- PayPal Checkout / Braintree: high consumer recognition, 1.2–2.9% + 30p depending on product
- Worldpay Online: established UK acquirer, negotiated rates at volume
- Checkout.com: enterprise focus, optimised authorisation rates
- Opayo (formerly Sage Pay): popular with UK SMEs on Sage accounting
Payment Gateway Costs
Online card fees are 1.5–2.5% + a per-transaction pence charge for most self-serve providers. Enterprise gateways use IC+ pricing at volume. Some gateways (Opayo, Worldpay Online) charge a monthly gateway fee (typically £20 to £45) on top of transaction fees. We would only take on that standing fee if a higher authorisation rate or an accounting integration you actually use pays it back; otherwise a no-monthly-fee gateway like Stripe leaves you better off.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Payment Link | Card Machine | Payment Gateway | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer present? | No | Yes (in person) | No (online) |
| Setup complexity | None: dashboard only | Low: hardware + app | Medium to high: developer needed |
| Website required? | No | No | Yes |
| Typical fee (UK cards) | 1.5–2.5% | 1.1–1.75% | 1.5–2.5% + pence |
| Hardware cost | None | £19–£99+ | None |
| Best for | Service businesses, freelancers, invoicing | Retail, hospitality, events | E-commerce, SaaS, subscriptions |
Coverage is the other half of the decision, because the gaps are where a second account creeps in. GoCardless has no card machine at all, and SumUp’s online checkout is thin next to its reader.
| Provider | Payment links | Card machines | Online checkout | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Square | Yes (Square Invoices) | Yes (Reader, Terminal) | Yes (Square Online) | Running the counter, the invoice and the website through one account |
| SumUp | Yes | Yes (Solo, Solo Lite) | Limited | Selling face to face with no monthly fee and no contract |
| myPOS | Yes (Payment Request) | Yes (Go 2, Flex) | Yes (Online Checkout) | Getting the takings into your account the same day |
| takepayments | Yes (Pay by link) | Yes | Yes | A negotiated rate, if you can commit to a contract to get it |
| GoCardless | Yes (Instant Bank Pay) | No | Direct Debit only | Billing the same customers month after month |
| Stripe | Yes | Yes (Stripe Terminal) | Yes | Building payments into your own site or app |
| PayPal | Yes (PayPal.Me, invoicing) | Yes (via Zettle) | Yes (Checkout, Braintree) | Customers who would rather pay with an account they already have |
Square, SumUp, myPOS, takepayments and GoCardless are affiliate partners. Stripe and PayPal are not, and they sit in this table on the same terms as everyone else.
Which Method Does Your Business Need?
Use a payment link if: You do not have a website, you invoice clients after completing work, you need to collect payment remotely without meeting in person, or you take occasional one-off payments and do not want the complexity of a gateway integration.
Use a card machine if: Customers pay in person at a counter, table, or event stall. You need the lower in-person card rates and a physical device for chip and PIN and contactless.
Use a payment gateway if: You have an e-commerce website and want customers to check out without leaving your site. You run a subscription service that needs recurring card billing. You need to integrate payment into your own app or platform.
Use all three if: We find many businesses need more than one method. A retailer with a physical shop and an online store needs a card machine for in-store and a payment gateway for online. A service business with occasional walk-in and remote clients might use a card machine and payment links, without needing a gateway at all.
Can One Provider Cover All Three?
Several providers cover all three payment methods under a single account and dashboard:
- Stripe covers payment links, Stripe Terminal (card machine integration), and full online gateway.
- Square covers payment links (via Square Invoices), Square Reader / Terminal (card machine), and Square Online (e-commerce checkout).
- SumUp covers payment links and card machines but has a more limited e-commerce gateway offering.
We rate consolidating to one provider worth it for most businesses: it simplifies reconciliation and gives you a single dashboard across every channel. The honest caveat is that no single provider is the best in every category, so at higher volumes you may save more by negotiating rates with a different acquirer for each channel than you lose in the extra admin.
Final Verdict: Which Should You Choose?
Most businesses do not have to pick one method and live with it. What matters is which one carries the bulk of your takings, because that is the rate you will actually feel, and which one you bolt on for the awkward remainder.
If you want the counter, the invoice and the website running through a single account, Square is the one we keep coming back to. In-person payments are 1.75% with no monthly fee and no contract, Square Invoices covers you when the customer is not in front of you, and Square Online handles the checkout, with all of it landing in the same dashboard and the same payout. It is not the cheapest provider on any single line, and if you only ever take money one way you can beat it. What you are paying the difference for is one set of figures to reconcile instead of three.
Take money face to face and almost nowhere else, and SumUp is the cheaper habit at 1.69% on the pay-as-you-go plan, with a reader you own outright rather than rent. If your problem is the wait rather than the rate, look at myPOS instead: 1.10% plus 7p, settled to your myPOS account instantly, which counts for a good deal more than a tenth of a percentage point when payday is Friday and Saturday’s takings are still in transit.
Bill the same customers every month and none of the above is really your answer. GoCardless collects by Direct Debit at 1% plus 20p, capped at £4, so a £900 invoice costs you £4 rather than the £15.75 a 1.75% card rate would take, and nobody has to remember to pay you. Where the payment has to happen inside your own checkout, Stripe is still the one to beat at 1.5% plus 20p, with the deepest developer tools of the group. That comes with a real condition, though: somebody has to build the integration, and if that somebody does not exist in your business, a payment link will get you paid this week and a gateway project will not.
Frequently Asked Questions
Not necessarily. If you only need to collect payments occasionally or do not have a website, a payment link achieves the same outcome without requiring a gateway integration. You need a gateway if you want payments to happen within your own website’s checkout flow, or if you need to process payments programmatically via API (subscriptions, split payments, platform flows).
Yes. Payment links from reputable providers (Stripe, Square, SumUp, GoCardless) use HTTPS encryption and PCI DSS-compliant hosted pages. The customer’s card data is never visible to the business sending the link; it is handled entirely by the provider. Payment links are as secure as any standard online checkout.
Hosted checkout options (Stripe Checkout, PayPal Checkout, Opayo’s hosted pages) require minimal or no code: you embed a button or redirect link on your site. Embedded or API gateways require a developer. If you use a website builder like Shopify, WooCommerce, or Squarespace, payment gateway plugins are available that install without custom code, though configuration still requires some technical familiarity.
Payment links are typically the cheapest option for occasional remote payments: no hardware, no monthly fees, and rates starting at 1.5% plus 20p with Stripe. Watch the spread between providers, though, because Square Invoices and SumUp payment links both charge 2.5% for the same job. GoCardless Instant Bank Pay (1%, capped at £4) is cheaper for larger invoices above around £400, since the fee is capped while card fees continue to rise with amount. For regular recurring payments, GoCardless Direct Debit is typically the lowest-cost option for amounts above £50.
Sources and Methodology
Every fee on this page comes from the provider’s own published UK pricing rather than a press release or an aggregator. We re-checked Square, SumUp, Stripe, myPOS and GoCardless on 21 August 2026 and corrected three figures that had moved since the page was last updated: Square Invoices and SumUp payment links are now 2.5% on online payments, and Stripe’s UK online rate is 1.5% plus 20p, not 25p. Where a provider quotes on application instead of publishing a rate, we say so rather than print an estimate.
We have not handled these terminals or opened these accounts, and we do not claim to have. What we have done is set the published terms side by side: the headline rate, the monthly fee, the contract length, the hardware cost and how long the money takes to reach you. Those five things decide what a payment method really costs, and a provider that looks cheap on the first can lose on the other four.
Primary sources for this update: squareup.com/gb, sumup.com/en-gb, stripe.com/gb, mypos.com/en-gb, gocardless.com, zettle.com/gb, worldpay.com, checkout.com, dojo.tech and takepayments.com. Square, SumUp, myPOS, GoCardless and takepayments pay us a commission if you sign up through a link here. Stripe, PayPal, Zettle, Worldpay, Checkout.com, Opayo and Dojo do not. Which providers we rank, and in what order, has never depended on that.
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