I had assumed the brand would find the firm. I typed Square into the Financial Services Register on 23 September 2026 and got 431 firms back. Square Enix was on the first page. So was a car dealer in Falkirk, a mortgage broker in Bristol and a dental practice in east London. The one I wanted, Squareup Europe Ltd, was there too, at number 17 of the first 20.
That is the whole difficulty with the question is my card machine provider FCA authorised, squeezed into one search. The name on the reader is a brand. The register is a list of legal entities, and a brand can sit on top of several of them, some current and some long gone, with nothing on the results page to tell you which of them signed the contract sitting in the drawer under your till.
I worked through 5 providers after that, and I'll say now that the answer for each of them was findable. It just wasn't findable by typing the name on the box.
The entity you want is the one on your contract
Card providers' terms name a legal entity, usually near the top, often with a company number and a firm reference number. That's the firm that holds your takings between the tap and your bank, and it's the one to look up. The brand may appear only as a trading name under it, if at all.
Squareup Europe Ltd, firm reference 900846, Companies House number 08957689, shows as an Authorised Electronic Money Institution since 15 March 2018, trading under 3 names. The register explains the status in one line: "A firm that we have given permission to issue electronic money (e-money) and provide payment services."
SumUp Payments Limited, firm reference 900700, company number 07836562, has held the same status since 1 May 2018. Its entry has something I didn't expect. Under agent status it also shows a PSD agent status since 3 February 2023 and an EMD agent status since 15 December 2025.
So the same company is authorised in its own right and is also registered as somebody's agent for some activity. I could not work out from the entry alone which activity, or for whom. I suspect it's a group arrangement between SumUp companies, but that's a guess, and I'd ask before assuming it has nothing to do with my own shop.
One company, 3 records
I went looking for Paymentsense next. The company behind Dojo is the clearest example of why the reference number matters more than the name. I was wrong about this one twice. I expected 1 entry, then I expected 2 and a spare. The search gives 3, all at the same London postcode, W2 1DG.
Firm reference 900925 is Paymentsense Limited as an Authorised Electronic Money Institution since 21 August 2019, which is the record that matters for card takings, and firm reference 738728 is the same company, the same Companies House number 06730690, shown as authorised since 21 November 2016 under a separate regime and typed Regulated.
And firm reference 924991 is Paymentsense Limited again, company 06730690, listed as a former PSD agent since 30 June 2026. Its page says: "Do not start to do regulated business with a PSD Agent that is no longer registered."
Fair enough. It also means a shop owner who clicked the wrong one of 3 identical names could read a warning meant for a record the company has left behind, and walk away worried about nothing.
I don't think any of this is sinister. Big firms carry old records and several permissions at once. It's still the reason I'd copy the reference number from the contract into the search box, and never the brand.
What the status line means for your money
Read this one line slowly. The FCA's safeguarding page, updated on 7 May 2026, says the payment and e-money rules "require firms to take steps to protect customer funds in the event of insolvency". For authorised payment institutions, authorised e-money institutions and small e-money institutions, that is mandatory and a condition of being authorised or registered.
A small payment institution is different. It can choose whether to safeguard, and it has to tell the FCA which it chose, both when it applies and in its annual return, which means the answer exists somewhere even if the app you use every morning never mentions it. A PSD agent isn't the regulated firm at all. It acts for a payment institution, and the register entry for an agent has a section for the firms it is connected to.
So 3 or 4 words after the name decide who owes you what if things go wrong. My guess is that most shop owners never read them. I'd rather know them before the first sale than after the first frozen payout.
The Visa list, which the register does not replace
Card machines sold by resellers add a layer the FCA register doesn't show. Visa keeps a Global Registry of Service Providers, and on 23 September 2026 it showed 9,145 records, last updated on 21 September.
Searching it for Paymentsense returns 1 record, PaymentSense Limited, England, registered as ISO Merchant and ISO High Integrity Risk under Visa's third party agent programme, region EU. ISO stands for independent sales organisation, which as I understand it is the category for firms that sign up merchants on behalf of an acquirer.
Searching for Teya returned nothing at all. That tells me only that nothing is listed under that exact word, and I would not read a missing name on a list run by a card scheme as a verdict on a firm the FCA has authorised, any more than I would read a listing as a recommendation.
Visa's front page is blunt about what merchants should do with the list. They "should only use service providers that are listed on the Registry for outsourcing their payment-related services", and must tell their acquiring bank before using one. If the company that sold you the machine isn't the regulated firm on your contract, it ought to turn up somewhere as somebody's agent.
What a public directory adds
A directory is quicker for the first pass. The UK list of e-money and payment institutions on Bank Index, an independent public listing built from regulators' registers and each company's own pages, held 408 firms on 23 September 2026, with 53 names under P and 33 under T. Teya Solutions Ltd and PayPal UK Ltd, the firm behind Zettle, each have a UK card there.
Here's the second thing I had wrong. I had assumed the big card brands would be on that UK list as UK firms. SumUp, Paymentsense and Square aren't. A search for SumUp lands on SumUp Limited, the Irish e-money institution in Dublin, authorised there on 27 October 2020. Paymentsense resolves to Paymentsense Ireland Limited. The Square card is the US parent, Block, Inc., and the only European entity named among its regulators is an Irish one.
None of those cards is wrong. They just aren't the firm on a British shop's contract. So I'd use the companies filed under P in that UK list and its neighbours to see who exists, read a card for the group around a firm, and then go to the register with the reference number from the contract.
The directory is read from registers in batches, too. A firm that lost a status last week may still show the old one, and a card that carries only its register line tells you little beyond the licence.
An aside about the 431
I have thought about that Square search more than it deserves. Among the 431 were a video game publisher, a firm in Dunstable that rents out televisions and a travel agent that used to be registered as a PSD agent. The register is doing exactly what it should, and it would be odd to blame it for returning every firm that has ever used a common English word in its name, from a games studio to a firm renting out televisions to people who still prefer not to buy one. It lists everybody the regulator has recorded, and a common word finds a lot of them.
Anyway, the reference number fixes it in 1 go. The name search spread those 431 results over 22 pages of 20.
The order I would check a card machine provider in
This bit is short, 5 steps, and none of them costs anything. Open the terms of your card machine agreement and copy 3 things from the first page: the legal name, the company number and the firm reference number. If the reference number isn't there, ask for it in writing, because a regulated firm will have one and will know it.
Search the Financial Services Register by that number. It returns 1 firm instead of 431. Read the status line, the date it started and any agent status underneath, and if there are 2 statuses, as SumUp's entry has since 2023, read both.
If the status is small payment institution, ask whether it safeguards your takings. Get the answer in writing. If the entry is an agent, look up the firm it's connected to as well.
If a reseller sold you the machine, search the Visa registry for the reseller's name and note what it's registered as.
Use a directory to see the group and the sister companies, then come back to the register for the answer. About 10 minutes, once, before you sign, and it's the only part of choosing a card machine that nobody else will do for you.
What I could not settle
I don't know which activity SumUp Payments Limited carries out as an agent, or for whom. The entry shows 2 dates, 3 February 2023 and 15 December 2025, and not the detail.
I don't know why Teya returns nothing on the Visa list. It may be listed under a different legal name, perhaps the name of an older company in the group or of a partner that signs merchants up on its behalf, and I haven't found which one, although I also tried Teya Solutions, the name on its UK register entries, and got nothing.
And I can't say how many shop owners search the brand, land on the wrong one of 3 records and never notice. The register doesn't count that. I keep thinking about the 17th result on page 1, sitting between a travel agent and a TV rental firm.
Questions people ask
Is my card machine provider FCA authorised?
Take the firm reference number from your agreement, not the brand, and look it up on the Financial Services Register, because a name search for a common word can return hundreds of firms and the number returns 1. The status line will say authorised electronic money institution, authorised payment institution, small payment institution or agent.
What is a PSD agent?
It acts for somebody else. A PSD agent is a firm registered to act for a payment institution rather than a regulated firm in its own right. Its entry lists the firms it is connected to, and a former PSD agent can no longer carry out regulated activities at all.
Why does my provider have more than one entry?
Permissions under different regimes, plus old records that stay on the register. Paymentsense Limited had 3 on 23 September 2026. It's the same company under 3 different numbers.