Which Is Better for Sole Traders and Micro-Businesses?
If your card takings are occasional, Square. If they are steady every week, the Tide plans start to earn their keep. That is most of the answer, and the reason is the standing cost rather than the rate.
Square works best when your card takings are unpredictable. You buy the reader for £19, connect it to your existing bank account, and pay no monthly fee. Your money arrives the next day, weekends included.
A gardener who takes three card payments in January and thirty in June pays nothing at all for the quiet month, because the fee only arrives when a customer does. Nothing accrues while the reader sits in a van.
Tide asks for more up front: a Tide business account, plus £29 to £49 for the hardware depending on which plan you take. For takings that come and go, that is a large commitment in exchange for a slightly lower rate you may not use often enough to notice.
Tide’s own figure is the useful test here: it says the Sell In-Person plan saves money once you take more than £2,900 a month in card payments.
Square vs Tide Card Reader Fees and Charges
Card Transaction Fees
Square charges one rate: 1.75% on every in-person card. Amex and premium cards are included, with nothing added for the card type.
Tide looks cheaper on paper, but all three tiers require a Tide business account and prices are ex VAT. Pay As You Go has no monthly fee and charges 1.5% + 5p; Essential costs £17.99 a month and charges 0.89% + 3p, with both available to cancel at any time. Premium costs £19.99 monthly or £159.99 annually on a 12-month contract and charges 0.69% + 3p. All three settle the next day.
So the headline 0.69% is not a rate you can simply opt into: it sits behind both a monthly fee and a twelve-month contract. Amex is the second difference, charged at 3% + 5p on Pay As You Go against Square’s flat 1.75%.
We read both rate cards on the providers’ own pricing pages rather than taking them from a comparison table, because card rates move and the figures were about to move again in December.
Monthly, Setup and Contract Costs
Square’s base plan costs nothing a month, and the reader is a single £19 payment with no instalments behind it. A closed month costs you nothing at all, which is why it suits trade that comes in seasons.
Tide’s 0.89% rate needs the Essential plan, at £17.99 plus VAT a month. The reader is £49 on Pay As You Go, £39 on Essential or £29 on Premium.
A Premium plan at £19.99 a month cuts the rate to 0.69% + 3p and the reader to £29, on a 12-month contract.
Only Tide’s Premium plan ties you in, for twelve months. What Tide actually asks for is not a contract but a bank: you have to open the account, run your money through it, and keep it open for as long as you want the reader to work.
Other Fees to Watch
Tide now settles the next working day on all three plans at no extra cost, so the £2.99 a month next-day add-on it used to sell has gone. That is a genuine improvement on the old Pay As You Go wait of two to three working days.
Square’s only optional cost is the 1.95% instant transfer. Next-day payout, weekends included, is free, and neither charges you to set up or to leave.
Fee Verdict: Who Costs Less
At low or irregular volume Square is cheaper once Tide’s plan fee and hardware go into the sum. Square costs more per tap and less per month, and for most sole traders the monthly side is the one that decides it.
At a £20 average sale, Essential pulls ahead above about 127 payments a month, while Premium does so above about 110 on monthly billing or 74 annually. We ran the comparison across a range of monthly takings to find those lines. These sums use Tide’s rates for UK consumer debit cards; other card types cost more under its terms.
Under those volumes the £17.99 or £19.99 a month costs you more than the lower rate saves, so you are paying a subscription to lose money slightly faster.
Square vs Tide Card Reader Payment Methods and Checkout Options
Cards, Wallets and Alternative Payment Methods
Chip and PIN, contactless, Apple Pay and Google Pay all work the same way on both, so nothing in a normal day’s trading separates them.
American Express is the exception, and it is not a small one. Square charges its standard 1.75% whatever card is presented, while the Tide reader charges 3% + 5p on Pay As You Go, so a £50 Amex sale costs you £1.55 through Tide and about 88p through Square.
That is 67p on a single £50 sale, and a salon or restaurant where a third of the covers go through on a corporate Amex loses it several times a day. We’d choose Square in any business whose customers lean on Amex.
Checkout Experience
Square comes with a hosted checkout, a free online store, and payment links you can send while a customer is still in front of you.
Tide gives you payment links and invoicing inside the app, and stops there. Anything you sell from a website has to be hosted and taken somewhere else, which means a second provider, a second set of fees and a second reconciliation.
If you only ever sell across a counter, that costs you nothing. If web orders are likely within the year, you are choosing to add a provider later rather than start with one that covers both.
Methods Verdict
Across the counter, Amex is the only thing separating them. Online they are not comparable: Square includes a store, a hosted checkout and an API, where Tide can send a link and raise an invoice.
Square vs Tide Card Reader Hardware, POS and In-Person Payments
Card Readers and Terminals
Square sells three devices you own outright: the £19 Reader for phone-paired payments, a £149 Terminal with a printer, and a £99 Stand for an iPad till. Tide’s neat 4-inch touchscreen reader costs £49 on Pay As You Go, £39 on Essential or £29 on Premium; the Plus model that prints receipts costs £69, £59 or £49 respectively.
Tide’s reader is the better-specified device of the two at the entry level, with its own 4G SIM, so it takes a payment without a phone or a WiFi signal behind it. Square’s £19 Reader needs a paired phone, and a flat battery stops the till.
POS Software and Hardware Add-ons
Square’s free app runs stock, staff, takings and a customer list. It scales up into a full retail or restaurant till.
That software costs nothing extra, which is what makes it the strongest single argument for Square: a cafe wanting table service, a shop wanting barcode stock control and a salon wanting bookings all get it on the free plan.
Tide’s till software is much thinner, with no table plans, no kitchen display and no barcode stock control. It will take the payment at the end of a meal, but the order itself has to be tracked on paper or in something else you pay for separately.
In-Person Verdict
For a counter, Square gives you a cheaper reader at £19 and a free till that does considerably more.
Tide’s hardware is the better payment device, because it works without a phone, but it is the weaker point of sale by a wide margin. Unless mobile signal where you trade is the deciding factor, Square is the one to take.
Square vs Tide Card Reader Online Payments and Integrations
Hosted Checkout, Payment Links and APIs
Square gives you a hosted checkout, payment links, and a documented API a developer can build into your own site. Tide offers in-app links and invoicing only, with no public API and no store builder behind them.
Platform Integrations
Square connects to WooCommerce, Wix, Xero and QuickBooks, so most small-business setups need no manual export. Tide reaches Xero, QuickBooks and Making Tax Digital through the banking side instead, which is the neater route if your bookkeeping already runs inside Tide: the card takings land in the same ledger as everything else.
Online Verdict
If any part of your trade happens on a website, take Square: it has the store, the checkout and the API, and Tide has none of the three. Tide’s advantage is on the accounting side, where takings and banking already sit together.
Square vs Tide Card Reader Payouts, Contract Terms and Account Risk
Settlement Speed and Payout Schedule
Both pay out the next day at no cost, but not on the same days: Square transfers every day, including weekends and holidays, while Tide’s card reader page promises next business day settlement on all three plans, where Pay As You Go once meant waiting two to three working days.
Same-day money is the one remaining gap. If a Saturday’s takings have to be in the account on Saturday, Square’s instant transfer will do it for 1.95% of the amount, and Tide’s card reader page lists no instant option.
Contract Length and Exit Terms
Square runs on rolling monthly terms, and so do Tide’s Pay As You Go and Essential plans; Premium ties you in for 12 months. The bigger catch with Tide is not the contract but the dependency: close the Tide account and the reader stops working the same day.
Reserves, Holds and Account Stability
Both providers can hold your money while they look into something, and the two risks are not the same size.
Square’s payment terms let it delay payouts or keep funds in reserve while it investigates your account or a disputed payment, and they set no maximum length for that hold.
With Tide the exposure is wider, because the reader sits inside the bank account rather than beside it. A compliance review on the account holds your card takings and your working balance at the same moment, so a single query can stop the takings coming in and the supplier payments going out together.
We’d hold a cash buffer with either, and a larger one with Tide. I’d keep a second account open elsewhere for that reason alone: it costs almost nothing and it is what lets you pay a supplier in the week a review runs.
Square vs Tide Card Reader Customer Reviews and Reputation
Trustpilot and Independent Review Themes
Square holds 3.9 out of 5 on Trustpilot, across more than 3,700 reviews. It is well rated for easy setup, and marked down for held funds and support that is hard to reach.
We read the recent reviews rather than resting on the aggregate, because a score built over years tells you how signing up went for people who signed up years ago.
Tide’s reader is newer and almost all of its feedback arrives through reviews of the banking app, so we found nothing that speaks specifically to the hardware or the card-taking side. Treat that as an absence of evidence rather than a verdict either way.
Support Channels and Response Times
Both route you to in-app support first, with limited phone access on either. The complaints that recur on both are about the same thing: getting someone on a line in the hour a payout has been held, rather than getting help setting the reader up.
Reputation Verdict
Square has the longer record and the one that actually covers the reader, which is why it is the safer of the two to judge on reviews at all. Tide’s reader is judged on the account behind it: well regarded as a business bank, and carrying the wider exposure that comes with holding the takings and the balance in one place.
Square vs Tide Card Reader for Businesses Already Banking With Tide
If your account is already with Tide, the plan fee stops being an extra cost and starts being a line you were paying anyway. At a £20 average sale, Essential’s 0.89% + 3p overtakes Square at about 127 payments a month, and Premium’s 0.69% + 3p at about 110 on monthly billing or 74 if you pay £159.99 for the year.
Above roughly £2,900 a month in card payments, which is Tide’s own stated break-even, the £17.99 pays for itself. The takings also arrive in the account the invoices were raised from, which removes a reconciliation step at the end of every quarter.
This is the one case where we’d choose the Tide reader without hesitation. If you bank elsewhere and have no reason to move, opening a Tide account to save a point on card fees is a poor trade, and Square is the shorter route.
Downsides of Square and Tide Card Reader
Downsides of Square
Square’s flat 1.75% gets expensive as takings rise, which is why it offers custom pricing above £200,000 a year rather than letting the standard rate stand. It settles only in pounds, and a non-UK card costs a further 1.95% on top. Its payment terms also let it hold funds during a review with no stated maximum, and the support complaints cluster in exactly that situation.
Downsides of Tide Card Reader
Tide needs you to be a Tide member, charges Amex at 3% + 5p on Pay As You Go, and gives you a till that will not run a restaurant floor. The weakness that matters most is structural: because the reader lives inside the bank account, a review of the account holds your card income and your balance together.
Alternatives to Square and Tide Card Reader
For the lowest flat rate without a bank attached, SumUp charges 1.69% on everything including Amex, and Lopay starts from 0.79%. Both accept sole traders, and SumUp’s cheapest reader, the Solo Lite, is £25 against Square’s £19.
If you take payments in more than one currency, Airwallex settles in the currency you were paid, rather than forcing it back to pounds.
None of the three comes with a till of Square’s depth. If you need stock, staff and table management, that narrows the choice back to Square. If you only need a card accepted cleanly, Lopay’s from-0.79% rate is the lowest headline here.
Final Verdict: Square or Tide Card Reader?
For most UK businesses, Square is the sounder choice. It is cheaper to start, takes Amex at its standard rate, includes a proper free till, and never asks you to change bank.
It is also the one that leaves your money in two places rather than one, which matters more than any of the fee differences if an account is ever reviewed. We’d choose Square for most readers of this page.
Choose the Tide Card Reader if you already bank with Tide and take more than about £2,900 a month across the counter, which is Tide’s own break-even figure. Essential at 0.89% + 3p is the one to start on, because Premium’s 0.69% + 3p costs £2 more a month and ties you in for twelve. For a Tide customer at that volume it is the better deal by a clear margin. For anyone else, opening a bank account to get a card reader is the wrong way round.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a Tide bank account to use the Tide Card Reader?
You need to be a Tide member to get the reader. Tide says card takings can be paid into your Tide account or another business account of your choice. Square has no such requirement and pays into your existing business account.
Is Square or the Tide Card Reader cheaper?
For low or irregular volume, Square is cheaper because it has no monthly fee. Tide’s Essential rate of 0.89% + 3p is lower per tap but needs the £17.99 +VAT plan, so it only beats Square’s flat 1.75% above about 127 transactions a month at a £20 ticket.
Does the Tide Card Reader accept American Express?
Yes. Tide’s terms list American Express at 3% + 5p on Pay As You Go, rising to 3.25% + 5p from 1 December 2026. Square accepts Amex at its standard 1.75% rate, so Square is cheaper if many of your customers pay on Amex.
How fast do Square and Tide pay out?
Square pays out the next day for free, including weekends and holidays, or within minutes for a 1.95% instant fee. Tide settles the next day on all three plans at no extra cost.
Which has better POS software?
Square, clearly. Its free POS app handles inventory, staff, analytics and customers and scales into full retail and restaurant systems. The Tide reader’s software is basic, with no table mapping, kitchen display or barcode inventory.
How we compared Square and the Tide Card Reader
Ranking criteria. We compared Square and the Tide Card Reader on transaction fees, monthly and hardware costs, payment methods, payouts, contract terms and account risk, weighted by what matters to a small UK business taking card payments.
Data sources. Every figure was checked against squareup.com/gb and tide.co, most recently on 16 October 2026. No comparison-site data, no press releases, no affiliate material.
Update cadence. We re-check both providers when either changes pricing, eligibility or terms, and the date on the page reflects the most recent full review. Some links on this page are affiliate links; see our editorial policy.