18 months at most, then a month at a time. Exit fees explained before you sign.
After its review of card acquiring, the Payment Systems Regulator capped POS terminal lease and rental contracts: an initial minimum term of no more than 18 months, then rolling renewals of no more than 31 days. Exit fees must be cost based and explained before you sign. It covers merchants with up to £10m of card turnover at the 14 largest providers, which the regulator put at around 95% of transactions for the merchants it protects.
Task before opening time. Find the start date of your terminal contract and count 18 months forward. Put that date in the calendar with a reminder two months before it: the month your term ends is the month you have the most room to negotiate.
| Rule | Limit | Who it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Initial minimum term, terminal lease or rental | 18 months at most | merchants up to £10m card turnover |
| After the initial term | rolling terms of 31 days at most | merchants up to £10m |
| Exit or termination fee | cost based, explained before you sign | merchants up to £10m |
| Summary box with your own prices | sent to you individually | merchants up to £50m |
| Trigger messages | linked to your term end, or every 30 days with no end date | merchants up to £50m |
| Terminal from an unconnected third party | not covered | anyone |
Example figures. A terminal at £25 a month on a 48-month contract, and you want to leave after 12 months. If the exit fee is built from the payments still due, that is 36 months, or £900.
Under an 18-month initial term the same exit at month 12 leaves six payments, £150 at most on the same logic. And on a rolling month after month 18, a notice period rather than a bill. The regulator also requires the fee to be cost based, so the £150 is a ceiling on this reasoning, not a promise.
If the first answer is a company with no link to your card provider, the 18-month cap may not protect you, and the other three answers matter twice as much.
A hair salon in Cardiff opened a trigger message from its provider that it had assumed was marketing. It said the minimum term on the terminal would end the following month.
The owner had signed two years earlier and remembered a four-year term. The contract had been signed after the cap came in, so the initial term was 18 months and the salon had been on a rolling month since. She got two quotes that week. The salon is invented; the message, and the habit of deleting it unread, are not.