This page answers one question for anyone running a UK online shop: what does it actually cost to take a card payment, and which part of that cost is the gateway’s and which is your platform’s. Every rate below was read off the provider’s own UK pricing page on 15 September 2026, and the interchange figures come from legislation.gov.uk. We build Orbit Commerce, an ecommerce platform with its own checkout, so we have a stake in you opening a shop. Every number is linked to its source so you can check it without us.
The short version: most guides compare headline card rates and stop. The bigger question is whether your platform takes a slice on top of that rate.
What are you actually paying: the platform fee, the card rate, or both?
There are two separate charges and they go to two different companies. The card rate is what the processor charges to move the money: a percentage plus a fixed amount in pence, per successful order. The platform transaction fee is a percentage your ecommerce platform adds on top of the same order, usually only when you use a processor it doesn’t own. One is a payment cost. The other is a licensing charge dressed up as one.
You also pay a monthly subscription, and that is the number people budget for even though it is often the smallest of the three once you are doing real volume. We worked the whole stack through in what it costs to start an online shop in the UK.
What do Stripe, PayPal and Square charge a UK shop right now?
Here are the published UK online rates, read from each provider’s own pricing page on 15 September 2026. These are the standard rates a new shop gets, charged per successful transaction, with nothing given back when you refund a customer.
| Provider | UK cards, online | Non-UK cards | Other charges published |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stripe | 1.5% + 20p | EEA 2.5% + 20p; international 3.15% + 20p | +2% if currency conversion is required; £20.00 per dispute; no setup or monthly fee |
| PayPal (all other commercial transactions) | 2.9% + 30p | EEA +1.29%, other markets +1.99% on top | Currency conversion 3% above the base exchange rate |
| PayPal Advanced Credit and Debit Card Payments (blended) | 1.2% + fixed fee (30p on that schedule) | Same cross-border percentages apply | Card acceptance only; the PayPal wallet rate above is separate |
| Square (online) | 1.4% + 25p | 2.5% + 25p for non-UK cards | No monthly fee on the entry tier; Plus from £29+ a month |
| Orbit Payments (Stripe-powered) | 2% + 25p Solo, 1.7% + 25p Team, 1.5% + 25p Pro and Enterprise | Amex and international 3.1% Solo, 2.7% Team, 2.5% Pro and Enterprise, each + 25p | Klarna 4.99% + 30p on every plan; no platform transaction fee |
Sources, all checked 15 September 2026: stripe.com/gb/pricing, paypal.com UK merchant fees, squareup.com/gb/en/pricing and orbitcommerce.net/pricing.
On PayPal versus Stripe, the honest answer is that they are not the same product. Stripe’s 1.5% + 20p is a card-acceptance rate. PayPal’s 2.9% + 30p is the rate for someone paying from their PayPal account, which customers want for a different reason. Most UK shops end up wanting both, which is where the second-processor problem starts.
Why do some platforms add a fee on top when you use your own gateway?
Because the platform makes money on payments, and a merchant who processes elsewhere is revenue walking out of the door. Shopify publishes the charge openly as a third-party transaction fee, and it falls as the plan price rises (shopify.com/uk/pricing, checked 15 September 2026):
| Shopify UK plan | Monthly price | Own-checkout card rate | Fee added if you use another processor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | £25 GBP/mo | 2% + 25p | 2% |
| Grow | £65 GBP/mo | 1.7% + 25p | 1% |
| Advanced | £344 GBP/mo | 1.5% + 25p | 0.6% |
| Plus | Starts at £1,800 GBP/mo | 1.3% + 25p | 0.2% |
Read the right-hand column as a price, because that is what it is. On Basic, 2% of everything you sell is the cost of not using the platform’s own checkout: £180 a month at £9,000 of sales, for nothing that touches your money. We pulled the rest of that bill apart in the real cost of Shopify in the UK in 2026.
Orbit answers it differently: there is one checkout, Orbit Payments, and no platform transaction fee on any plan. You are not choosing between a cheap processor and a surcharge, because there is one published card rate per plan and nothing added to it. If your business needs a specific other gateway, Orbit is not the right fit. You get one published card rate per plan through Orbit Payments, which is Stripe underneath, and the pricing page puts it plainly: “That’s the whole cost: no hidden surcharges, no extra fees for using particular gateways, and no penalty as your sales grow.” PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link and Klarna sit in that same checkout, so you are not bolting on a second processor to offer a wallet.
What does a £45 order actually cost you, worked through end to end?
Assumptions, stated so you can argue with them: a £45 order including delivery, paid with a standard UK consumer card, no refund, no conversion. Subscriptions are the monthly figures above (Orbit prices ex VAT). Three setups:
- Shopify Basic with Shopify Payments. 2% + 25p = 90p + 25p = £1.15 per order.
- Shopify Basic with Stripe as a third-party gateway. Stripe 1.5% + 20p = 67.5p + 20p = 87.5p, plus Shopify’s 2% third-party fee = 90p. Total £1.78 per order.
- Orbit Solo with Orbit Payments. 2% + 25p = £1.15 per order, with no platform fee on top.
Now multiply, and add the subscription:
| Orders a month at £45 | Shopify Basic + Shopify Payments | Shopify Basic + Stripe (third-party) | Orbit Solo + Orbit Payments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 (£2,250 of sales) | £82.50 | £113.75 | £82.50 |
| 200 (£9,000) | £255.00 | £380.00 | £255.00 |
| 1,000 (£45,000) | £1,175.00 | £1,800.00 | £1,175.00 |
Two things fall out of that. At entry level the platform’s own checkout and Orbit cost the same, 2% + 25p, so on card fees there is nothing in it. And choosing the cheaper processor on a platform that surcharges costs £625 a month at 1,000 orders, despite Stripe having the lowest rate of the three. That is the trap the comparison posts miss.
At 1,000 orders you would move up a tier, and there the answer is genuinely mixed. On £45,000 of sales, Shopify Grow (£65 plus 1.7% + 25p) is £1,080 and Orbit Team (£85 plus the same 1.7% + 25p) is £1,100, so Shopify is £20 cheaper. One tier further it flips: Shopify Advanced is £1,269, Orbit Pro £1,174. We are not claiming Orbit is always cheapest, only that the rate card is published, has no surcharge in it, and takes a minute to check on our pricing page.
What about Amex, international cards and currency conversion?
These are where a tidy 1.5% quietly becomes 3% or more, and why your effective rate never matches the headline. A card issued outside the UK costs more to accept because the interchange cap below does not apply to it, and Amex sits on its own scheme with its own economics.
- International cards. Stripe: 2.5% + 20p for EEA cards, 3.15% + 20p international. Square: 2.5% + 25p for non-UK cards. PayPal adds 1.29% (EEA) or 1.99% (other markets) on top of its base rate. Orbit: 3.1% + 25p on Solo, 2.7% on Team, 2.5% on Pro and Enterprise.
- Amex. Orbit prices Amex on the same line as international, so Solo is 3.1% + 25p. Stripe’s UK page prices by where the card was issued rather than by scheme and publishes no separate Amex line, so we are not quoting one.
- Currency conversion. Stripe adds 2% when a conversion is required; PayPal converts at 3% above the base exchange rate. That percentage lands on every converted order, and it is usually larger than the gap between any two processors’ card rates.
- Disputes. Stripe charges £20.00 per dispute received, which on a £45 basket wipes out the fee margin on dozens of other orders.
If you sell abroad, model your mix before you pick. A shop with 30% non-UK orders on a 1.5% domestic rate is really paying nearer 2% blended, before conversion.
Where does the money actually go?
Part of every card fee is fixed by law and part is the acquirer’s margin. Under retained Regulation (EU) 2015/751, payment service providers must not offer or request a per-transaction interchange fee of more than 0.2% for any UK consumer debit card transaction (Article 3) or 0.3% for any UK consumer credit card transaction (Article 4), per legislation.gov.uk, checked 15 September 2026. Check legislation.gov.uk before relying on this.
So when you are quoted 1.5% on a UK debit card, about 0.2% of it is interchange going to the card issuer and the rest is scheme fees plus your processor’s margin. Useful for two reasons: no consumer-card rate can go much below half a percent, and a 2% platform surcharge is not a payment cost at all, since it is several times the entire regulated interchange component.
When is a cheaper headline rate not actually cheaper?
Five situations, all common:
- Your platform surcharges outside processors. See above: 1.5% + 20p became an effective 3.95% of a £45 order once a 2% platform fee landed on it.
- Your basket is small. The pence part dominates. At 1.4% + 25p a £6 order costs 33p, or 5.6%; the same rate on a £200 order is 1.5%. Under about £15 average order value, chase the fixed fee, not the percentage.
- You sell abroad. The lowest domestic rate can come with the highest international one. Weight by your actual order mix.
- The rate is blended and your cards are not average. Blended pricing quotes one number across all card types, so if your customers skew towards commercial or premium rewards cards your real cost drifts above the quote while the quote stays true.
- The cheap gateway needs a second processor. Adding PayPal alongside a card processor means two payout schedules and two reconciliations a month. That cost is your time, and it shows up in checkout too, because every extra redirect is somewhere to lose the order.
One thing that is not a fee at all: what you offer at checkout changes how many orders you get, and the FCA rules changed what UK shops can offer, which we covered in buy now, pay later for small UK shops. A rate 0.2% higher that converts better is the cheaper rate.
How to work out your own number in ten minutes
- Take last month’s order count and average order value, and split the orders into UK, EEA and rest of world. Guess if you must, but guess explicitly.
- Apply each provider’s published rate to each bucket and add the per-order pence. Do not skip the pence.
- Add the subscription, any third-party transaction fee on full sales value, conversion charges, and a dispute allowance.
- Divide the total by your sales. That percentage is your real cost of taking money, and it is the only number worth comparing between platforms.
Questions people ask about payment fees on a UK online shop
What is the best payment gateway for a UK small business?
There is no single winner. Stripe has the lowest published UK card rate at 1.5% + 20p, Square is 1.4% + 25p online, and PayPal is 2.9% + 30p for wallet payments (all checked 15 September 2026). The right pick depends on your average order value, how many non-UK cards you take, and above all whether your ecommerce platform charges a transaction fee for using an outside processor.
Is Stripe or PayPal cheaper for a UK online shop?
On card acceptance, Stripe is cheaper: 1.5% + 20p against PayPal’s 2.9% + 30p for standard commercial transactions (checked 15 September 2026). PayPal’s Advanced Credit and Debit Card Payments is quoted at 1.2% plus a fixed fee, which is closer. But they do different jobs, so most shops offer the PayPal wallet alongside cards rather than choosing one.
What are typical card processing fees for a UK online shop?
For UK consumer cards online, published rates in September 2026 sit between about 1.2% and 2.9% of the order, plus 20p to 30p per transaction. Non-UK cards run roughly 2.5% to 3.15%, and currency conversion adds 2% to 3% on top. Under retained Regulation (EU) 2015/751, interchange itself is capped at 0.2% on UK consumer debit and 0.3% on credit.
Do I have to pay a transaction fee to my ecommerce platform?
Only if your platform charges one. Shopify publishes third-party transaction fees of 2% on Basic down to 0.2% on Plus when you use an outside processor (shopify.com/uk/pricing, checked 15 September 2026). Orbit charges no platform transaction fee on any plan; the card rate through Orbit Payments is the whole payment cost.
Can I offer PayPal and Klarna without a second processor?
Yes, if your checkout supports them natively. In Orbit, cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link, Klarna, Bacs Direct Debit and SEPA all run through the one checkout and the one payout stream, with per-transaction fees and tax documents in the dashboard and CSV export. Klarna is priced at 4.99% + 30p on every plan. One reconciliation instead of two.
If you want to check your own numbers against a real checkout rather than a comparison table, build the shop first and decide later. Orbit gives you one published card rate per plan with no platform transaction fee, Amex, international and Klarna rates printed next to it, and wallets including PayPal in the same checkout. There is a 14-day free trial, no card required, so you can price your catalogue and run a test order before paying anything: start free.