Which Is Better for Small UK Businesses?
If you can rely on a phone signal where you trade, Lopay is cheaper at every volume we modelled. If you cannot, that is the one thing Tide’s reader does that Lopay’s cannot, and it outweighs the rate gap.
Take a mobile hairdresser doing 50 sales a month at a £20 ticket. That is £1,000 through the reader, which costs about £7.90 on Lopay Essential against £17.50 on Tide pay-as-you-go, and the money goes to whichever bank she already uses.
Market traders taking £1,500 to £3,000 a month sit in the same camp, and if waiting a week for the money is the problem, Lopay Standard moves it to the next day, Monday to Friday, for 0.99%.
That matters most in a quiet month. A rainy October with barely a sale costs a Lopay trader nothing, because there is no subscription to pay. Tide Essential still takes its £17.99 + VAT whether you trade or not.
Signal changes the answer. A plumber in a Victorian basement, an electrician on a rural Devon farm or a trader at a county showground in a blackspot all have the same problem: the customer is standing there with a card and the phone has nothing to give the reader.
Tide’s reader carries its own 4G SIM, so it connects on its own and needs neither your phone nor the venue’s WiFi.
Lopay’s WisePad 3 is Bluetooth-only and borrows your phone’s data, so if the signal goes while the card is on the reader, you lose the sale with it.
Shops and cafés above £3,000 a month are where Tide’s plans are supposed to start paying for themselves, and on our modelling they still do not catch Lopay Essential.
Tide Reader vs Lopay Fees and Charges
Card Transaction Fees
Tide prices in-person card payments by plan. On pay-as-you-go you pay 1.5% + 5p for a UK consumer debit card, with no monthly fee behind it.
Essential drops that to 0.89% + 3p and Premium to 0.69% + 3p. Those are Tide’s published rates for domestic consumer debit; other cards follow its Membership and Product Terms.
Tide says its transaction and subscription fees rise on 1 December 2026. Its card reader page does not yet show the new figures, so the Tide rates on this page are the ones in force before that date.
Tap to Pay on iPhone, no hardware, sits at 1.5% + 11p on PAYG, 0.89% + 9p on Essential or 0.69% + 9p on Premium.
Amex is the expensive one on Tide: 3% + 5p on Pay As You Go, nearly double what the same card costs you through Lopay.
Lopay charges no monthly fee on any tier and prices the speed of your payout instead. Essential pays weekly at 0.79%, Standard next day, Monday to Friday, at 0.99%, and Instant lands the money the same day at 1.79%, to any UK bank.
Amex runs through Lopay’s reader at a +1% surcharge on your base rate.
Remote payments are priced separately on both. Lopay adds 0.49% on top of your tier rate, which puts an Essential customer at 1.28% all in.
Tide’s links cost 2.5% + 9p on UK consumer debit cards on Pay As You Go, or 1.2% + 9p with its Sell More Online plan at £6.99 + VAT a month; other card types are priced in Tide’s terms. If a decent share of your sales are invoiced or sent by text rather than tapped, that is the difference you will feel most.
Monthly, Setup and Contract Costs
No Lopay tier carries a monthly fee. The WisePad 3 is £35 + P&P for your first reader, £49 for extras.
There is no setup charge, no minimum term and nothing to pay if you stop using the reader. The one exception is the Business Terminal, which is rented on a 12-month contract and then rolls monthly.
For counter use, the Lopay Business Terminal (Stripe Reader S700) rents at £15 a month plus £8.95 delivery. That is the device for Mail Order and Telephone Order (MOTO) payments, where you key in a card number the customer reads to you, or for a fixed till.
The standard reader costs £49 + VAT on Pay As You Go, £39 + VAT on Essential or £29 + VAT on Premium.
The Card Reader Plus, with a 5.5-inch screen and a built-in printer, is £69 + VAT on PAYG, £59 on Essential or £49 on Premium.
Tide offers three plans, all ex VAT and requiring a Tide business account. Pay As You Go has no monthly fee, charges 1.5% + 5p for debit and can be cancelled at any time; Essential costs £17.99 a month or £139.90 a year, charges 0.89% + 3p and is a monthly plan you can cancel at any time. Premium costs £19.99 a month or £159.99 paid annually, charges 0.69% + 3p and requires a 12-month contract.
Other Fees to Watch
If you need the takings in the bank the same day, only Lopay offers it: the Instant tier charges 1.79% and the speed is inside that rate, with no separate payout fee. Tide’s card reader pages list no instant option at all.
Chargebacks are the cost neither pricing page mentions. Neither publishes a chargeback fee there, though Tide’s Payment Links terms do set £10 for each chargeback it processes.
In hospitality, beauty or ticketing, where chargebacks are a routine cost of trading rather than a rarity, that is a figure you want in your margins from the start rather than discovered later.
Lopay’s payment links carry a minimum charge of 50p per payout, so a very small remote sale costs more than the 0.49% suggests.
Refunds cost nothing on Lopay, which its pricing page states outright. For a clothing brand running a returns policy, that is one fewer charge attached to every parcel that comes back.
Fee Verdict: Who Costs Less
We modelled debit-only trade at three monthly volumes, excluding VAT, and Lopay Essential came out cheapest at every one of them.
At £1,000 a month, which is about 50 sales at a £20 ticket, you pay around £7.90 on Lopay Essential against £17.50 on Tide pay-as-you-go, so Lopay leaves you £9.60 better off every month.
Step up to £5,000 a month and Lopay Essential costs about £39.50. On the same debit-only, ex-VAT model, Tide Essential costs £69.99 and Premium £61.99 including their monthly fees.
At £15,000 a month, Lopay Essential costs £118.50 against £173.99 for Tide Essential and £145.99 for Premium. Neither Tide plan catches Lopay on monthly billing.
Tide’s Premium rate only beats Lopay Essential per tap once your average sale is above about £30, because only then does the 0.1% it saves outweigh the 3p, and the £19.99 monthly fee still has to be earned back on top. Most UK retail and hospitality sits at £15 to £25, so that point is rarely reached.
Tide Reader vs Lopay Payment Methods and Checkout
Cards, Wallets and Alternative Payment Methods
Visa, Mastercard, contactless, chip and PIN, Apple Pay and Google Pay all work on both readers, up to the £100 contactless cap. The only card that separates them is American Express, and the price difference on it is large.
Lopay takes Amex on the WisePad 3 at a +1% surcharge on your base rate. Tide’s terms charge American Express at 3% + 5p on Pay As You Go, rising to 3.25% + 5p from 1 December 2026.
If you serve hotel guests or corporate diners who routinely settle on Amex, Lopay is much the cheaper reader for it. An Amex payment costs 1.79% on Lopay Essential, against 3% + 5p on Tide’s Pay As You Go.
Checkout Experience
Payment links work on both: you generate a URL and send it by text, WhatsApp or email. Tide calls them Instant Checkout Links; Lopay calls them Payment Links.
Lopay adds Subscription Links for recurring billing, useful if you sell a monthly retainer or a subscription box and want to skip a separate Stripe or GoCardless account. Tide does not match this.
Phone and mail-order payments are the exception. On Lopay you need the Business Terminal for them, because the WisePad 3 cannot key in a card number, whereas Tide handles them through a virtual terminal with no hardware upgrade at all. QR payments work on both.
Lopay digital receipts are customisable, with your logo and trading name. Tide’s pages do not say whether its receipts can carry your branding.
Methods Verdict
On checkout breadth we put Lopay ahead: cheaper Amex on the reader, links at 1.28% all-in against Tide’s 2.5% + 9p (or 1.2% + 9p on its £6.99 plan), and built-in subscription links.
Tide’s one advantage here is taking a card over the phone without buying anything extra. That is worth having if call-in orders are occasional, because the alternative is renting a Business Terminal at £15 a month for a handful of sales.
Tide Reader vs Lopay Hardware, POS and In-Person
Card Readers and Terminals
The standard Tide reader is a 4-inch touchscreen device, 170g, with a built-in 4G SIM, WiFi and Bluetooth.
The battery lasts about a working day, which is enough for a round of calls or a market shift without a charger. It costs £49 + VAT on Pay As You Go, £39 on Essential or £29 on Premium.
The Card Reader Plus steps up to a 5.5-inch screen with a built-in printer, £69 + VAT on PAYG, £59 on Essential or £49 on Premium.
At 495g it is nearly three times the weight of the standard reader, which you notice in a market trader’s apron and do not notice at all on a coffee-shop counter where printed slips matter.
Lopay’s WisePad 3 does far less. It has no screen and no SIM, connects over Bluetooth, and takes contactless and chip and PIN only. The first one costs £35 plus postage, and £49 after that.
That is a cheap way into card acceptance, and the saving is paid for in dependence: everything the WisePad 3 does runs through your phone’s data connection, so where the phone has no bars the reader has no use.
Lopay also offers Tap to Pay on iPhone and Android at no hardware cost, for an extra 8p a transaction, handy as a backup or for occasional acceptance.
For counter use, the Lopay Business Terminal (Stripe Reader S700) adds a touchscreen and WiFi, at £15 a month on a 12-month contract, and unlocks MOTO.
POS Software and Hardware Add-ons
Both run a companion till app on iOS and Android, and this is where they separate. Tide’s does little beyond a basic product catalogue.
Lopay goes deeper: product grids, stock tracking, inventory and unlimited staff accounts, all inside the same flat fee.
Run a small bakery with three counter staff and a stockroom and that depth saves bolting a separate till app on top.
For printed receipts, Tide needs the Card Reader Plus; Lopay handles it through the Business Terminal.
Neither documents support for an external cash drawer or a barcode scanner. If you need a full till with both, neither of these readers is the right thing to build it on.
In-Person Verdict
For mobile trades in signal-flaky spots, we rate Tide the winner. The 4G SIM means a boiler engineer in a Cornish farmhouse or a trader at a county fair still takes the card with no phone bars.
That is the job the Tide reader is built for, and nothing in Lopay’s range answers it, because none of its readers has a SIM of its own.
For a counter business we put Lopay ahead, both on what it costs to start (£35 against £49 + VAT on Tide’s pay-as-you-go) and on what the till app does once you are running.
If you are pricing a fixed till, compare the Lopay Business Terminal with the Tide Card Reader Plus rather than the WisePad 3 with Tide’s entry unit, because only those two do the same job. On that comparison Lopay is cheaper and its inventory tools go further.
Tide Reader vs Lopay Online Payments and Integrations
Hosted Checkout, Payment Links and APIs
Tide’s Instant Checkout Links spin up a hosted payment page you share by URL, text or email, and Tide publishes Open Banking APIs through its developer portal.
A freelance copywriter taking a fixed-price deposit from a custom WordPress page can send that link straight from the invoice email and skip a checkout build entirely.
Lopay’s Payment Links cover one-offs, and Subscription Links add recurring collection, handy for a monthly coffee subscription or a quarterly retainer.
There is no public Lopay developer API documented. For a custom-built checkout you would integrate Stripe directly.
Platform Integrations
Tide connects to Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, FreeAgent, Kashflow, Crunch and ClearBooks via bank feed and transaction data, broader accounting reach than Lopay.
Lopay connects to Xero, and you can embed Lopay links inside Xero invoices so a client pays from the invoice email.
Lopay also pushes daily sales and payment data into QuickBooks. Past those two, nothing connects automatically and you are back to exporting and keying in figures yourself.
There is no Shopify or WooCommerce plugin for Lopay. If you sell online as well as in person, your shop’s orders go through whatever gateway it already uses, and you reconcile two sets of takings.
Online Verdict
If your accountant works in Sage, FreeAgent or KashFlow, Tide is the better fit, because Lopay connects to Xero and QuickBooks and nothing else.
If remote payments are mostly invoice deposits or one-off links alongside in-person trade, Lopay’s 1.28% all-in link rate beats Tide’s 2.5% + 9p, and its 1.2% + 9p on the £6.99 plan on a typical sale, and adds the subscription-link option on top.
Tide Reader vs Lopay Payouts, Contracts and Risk
Settlement Speed and Payout Schedule
Tide’s card reader page now lists next-day settlement on all three plans at no extra cost.
Tide’s page says it can pay your takings into another business account of your choice, so the money can land where you already bank. You still have to become a Tide member to get the reader.
Lopay’s schedule follows your tier. Essential (0.79%) pays weekly, Standard (0.99%) next day, Instant (1.79%) in minutes to any UK bank, around the clock.
None of that depends on where you bank. Lopay pays to any UK account, so you keep the bank you have.
Contract Length and Exit Terms
Neither locks you in on the reader: there is no minimum term, no exit fee and no notice to give if you stop. The exception is Lopay’s Business Terminal, which is rented on a 12-month contract before it rolls monthly.
The Tide hardware is yours once paid for, and Tide does not ask for the reader back. Lopay’s WisePad 3 is a third-party device too, so leaving Lopay leaves you with usable Stripe-compatible kit.
Reserves, Holds and Account Stability
Tide holds 4.4 out of 5 on Trustpilot across about 39,000 reviews, and reading the negative ones turns up the same complaint repeatedly: accounts frozen or closed with little warning, usually during anti-money-laundering checks.
That matters more on Tide than it would elsewhere, because the reader and the bank account are the same company. If Tide is your only business account, one hold stops your banking and your card takings at the same moment.
The supplier direct debits bounce on the same Monday the reader takings stop arriving, and you are explaining both to the same support queue.
Lopay’s profile (4.7 from about 3,000 reviews) shows no comparable freeze pattern; its complaints cluster on thin reporting and minor app glitches.
Lopay only handles payments, so the same problem there stops your card takings and leaves your current account, your bills and your own wages alone. Keeping the two apart is worth something precisely because it is boring.
Tide Reader vs Lopay Customer Reviews and Reputation
Trustpilot and Independent Review Themes
On Trustpilot, Tide sits at 4.4 out of 5 across about 39,000 reviews. Reviewers who like it keep praising the same three things: easy onboarding, a clean app, and quick setup for a new limited company.
The negatives are consistent: unexpected account freezes, slow support when things go wrong, and friction verifying identity documents.
Beyond Trustpilot, Tide’s iPhone app sits at 4.8 on the UK App Store, so the day-to-day experience rates well.
Lopay holds 4.7 on Trustpilot from about 3,000 reviews, and 4.8 on the UK App Store. Its reviewers call out low fees, fast payouts and quick setup.
Its complaints are narrow: reporting limits and the odd app glitch. The score gap itself is modest, 4.7 against 4.4, on a much smaller Lopay base, so the clearer signal is what the complaints are about.
Support Channels and Response Times
Lopay lists in-app, email and phone support on its pricing page.
Tide works mainly through in-app chat. Its card reader page also gives a phone line, 020 3318 0066, for help buying or setting up a reader.
If your Tide account freezes on a bank-holiday Saturday, you are at the mercy of the chat queue to dig out.
That matters most if your year turns on one weekend. A festival caterer, a Christmas-market trader or a wedding supplier cannot wait in a chat queue on the Saturday the money is supposed to be coming in.
Reputation Verdict
We put Lopay ahead on reputation, though not on the scores, which at 4.7 against 4.4 are close and sit on very different numbers of reviews. It is the content of the complaints that decides it: the account-freeze pattern that runs through Tide’s negative reviews does not appear in Lopay’s.
If your cash flow needs uninterrupted card payments week in, week out, we treat Lopay’s stability record as the deciding factor over the rate gap, not on top of it.
Tide Reader vs Lopay for International Payments
Foreign Visa and Mastercard work on both readers. When a US tourist taps an American Visa, their issuing bank handles the FX at their end.
Tide does not advertise a merchant-side FX surcharge for accepting that card on its main pricing page.
Lopay’s pricing page adds 1% for Amex, corporate and international card payments, on top of your base rate.
In a Bath souvenir shop, a London street-food stall or a Cotswolds B&B, a large share of taps come off foreign cards, and on each of those Lopay charges 1.79% rather than the 0.79% on its pricing page.
Both pay out in sterling only, whatever card was used. What separates them for a cross-border business is the account behind the reader rather than the reader itself.
Tide’s platform offers EUR accounts and international payments, which can save reconciliation hassle if you invoice in euros or dollars alongside GBP at the till.
Lopay is sterling-only and holds no foreign currency at all. If you invoice abroad in any volume, you will need a separate multi-currency account such as Wise Business or Airwallex alongside whichever reader you pick.
Downsides of Tide Reader and Lopay
Downsides of Tide Reader
The biggest one is that you cannot buy the reader on its own. You have to become a Tide member to get it, even though Tide will then pay your takings into another business account if you prefer.
The hardware is also dearer unless you commit for a year. Tide’s reader is £49 + VAT with no plan and only falls to £29 on Premium’s 12-month contract, against £35 for a Lopay WisePad 3, £25 for a SumUp Solo Lite, and a Square reader shipped free or near-free with a new account.
Tide’s PAYG rate of 1.5% + 5p is roughly double Lopay’s Essential rate for low-volume users.
We rate the account-freeze risk as a live one rather than a remote possibility, because Trustpilot shows the same thing happening repeatedly: anti-money-laundering checks locking an account with no warning.
Treat it as a planning input: if Tide is your only business account, keep a second current account elsewhere for emergencies.
Support runs mainly through in-app chat, which is fine for a question about a fee and much less fine when the problem is that you cannot reach your money.
Downsides of Lopay
Being Bluetooth-only is the real limitation, and Lopay has nothing in its range that answers it. Every reader it sells depends on your phone’s data, where Tide’s two main models carry their own SIM.
Lopay does payments and nothing else by design: there is no invoicing, no budgeting, no expense management and no business account behind it.
You need a separate bank account for the rest, which means another app, another login, and one more reconciliation step at month-end.
On Essential you wait a week for the money. If Friday’s takings are what pay Monday’s stock order, a payout that arrives on Wednesday is no use to you.
Moving to Standard for next-day payouts costs you 0.2% of everything you take, so on £5,000 a month that is £10 to stop waiting. If you reorder stock weekly, it is worth paying.
Reporting inside Lopay is thin, which its own reviewers flag. For a VAT return or management accounts, do the work in Xero or QuickBooks and treat the Lopay app as the till rather than the ledger.
Lopay is also the younger and smaller company, with a £6m seed round raised in October 2023 and a trading history measured in a few years rather than Tide’s.
That matters most if you are tying a fixed till and a year of inventory data to one supplier.
Alternatives to Tide Reader and Lopay
SumUp Solo Lite charges 1.69% flat with no monthly fee. The reader is £25 ex VAT (formerly the Air).
At 1.69% it sits between Tide’s pay-as-you-go rate and Lopay Essential, with one rate for every card and no tiers to pick between. That simplicity is the reason to choose it over either.
Square Reader sits at 1.75% flat, and Square ships its reader free or near-free depending on the promotion running at the time.
Square gives you free inventory, staff timesheets, appointment booking and an online shop, none of which either Tide or Lopay matches. For a salon that needs the booking diary and the card machine to be the same system, we put Square ahead of both.
Zettle by PayPal charges 1.75% flat and settles into your PayPal balance, with the first reader around £29, though Zettle runs promotional pricing and we could not pin the current figure.
For an eBay or Etsy seller who already takes online payments through PayPal, Zettle is the obvious third option, because the counter takings and the online sales end up in the same PayPal balance.
Final Verdict: Tide Reader or Lopay?
For most UK sole traders and small businesses, the answer is Lopay. Its 0.79% Essential rate undercuts Tide PAYG by nearly half.
It pays out to any UK bank, so nothing about your existing banking has to change to take a card. Its reviews also show none of the account-freeze pattern that runs through Tide’s.
At £35 the WisePad 3 costs little enough to try for a month, and if it does not suit you there is no contract to end and no hardware to send back.
Tide is the better buy in two situations, and only two. The first is mobile work in places where the phone signal fails.
A gardener in rural Devon, an electrician in a Welsh farmhouse or a trader at a county showground can take the card on Tide’s own 4G SIM without a phone involved at all, and nothing in Lopay’s range can do that at any price.
Second, businesses already banking with Tide that want one dashboard for payments and finances. If Tide is already your account, the reader can be a sensible extension, but Lopay remains cheaper at every volume we modelled.
Lopay is cheaper, pays to any bank and has the better complaint record. Tide has the only reader here that works without a phone, and one dashboard for payments and banking. If the signal where you trade is reliable, that first list is the one that decides it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Lopay cheaper than Tide Card Reader?
Yes, for the majority of UK businesses. Lopay Essential charges 0.79% with no monthly fee; Tide PAYG charges 1.5% + 5p, almost double.
Even Tide’s lower-rate Premium plan (0.69% + 3p plus £19.99 + VAT/month) works out more expensive than Lopay Essential at a typical £20 average basket.
Does Lopay pay out to any bank account?
Yes, Lopay pays out to any UK bank account via Faster Payments. No requirement to hold a specific account, no need to switch banking.
Tide Card Reader needs Tide membership. Tide says settlements can go to your Tide account or another business account of your choice.
Do I need a Tide 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.
Does Lopay accept American Express?
Yes, Lopay accepts American Express on both the WisePad 3 and the Business Terminal, at a +1% surcharge.
Tide’s card reader takes Amex too, at a higher price: its terms list American Express at 3% + 5p on Pay As You Go, rising to 3.25% + 5p from 1 December 2026.
If your customer base routinely settles on Amex (hotel guests, corporate diners, US tourists), Lopay’s +1% surcharge makes it the cheaper of the two.
How fast does Lopay pay out?
Three speeds, depending on tier. Essential (0.79%) pays weekly. Standard (0.99%) pays next day, Monday to Friday. Instant (1.79%) sends funds to any UK bank within minutes, 24/7.
Instant payouts include weekends and bank holidays.
Tide’s card reader page lists next-day settlement on all three plans at no extra cost, into your Tide account or another business account of your choice.
Is Tide Card Reader FCA regulated?
Yes. Tide Platform Limited is an FCA-authorised electronic money institution (FRN: 900843).
Lopay Ltd (company number 13384279) says it works with Stripe Payments UK Limited, which provides the payments and e-money services under its own FCA authorisation (lopay.com, read 6 October 2026).
So the FCA-authorised firm behind your Lopay card payments is Stripe Payments UK, not Lopay itself. That matters if you are an accountant onboarding clients or trading in a higher-risk category.
How we reviewed Tide Card Reader vs Lopay
Ranking criteria. We compared Tide Card Reader and Lopay on pricing, fees, feature set, eligibility, and contract terms. We also verified regulatory status and deposit protection where applicable.
Data sources. Every provider’s pricing page, terms, and product docs were checked directly in October 2026. No comparison sites, no press releases, no affiliate material.
Update cadence. We re-verify every provider on this page regularly, and whenever a provider changes pricing, eligibility, or terms. The verification date on the page reflects the most recent full review. Some links on this page are affiliate links; see our editorial policy.