"FCA-authorized EMI (FRN 900461) with self-serve UK merchant accounts, Faster Payments payouts and published UK card pricing." That's the first scored line on the Bank Index profile for Stripe's UK entity, and it tells a shop owner more in one sentence than most sales pages manage in ten.
It names the regulator and gives the register number. It says what sort of firm this is, and it admits the price is public. Very few card payment providers UK shops deal with have a profile that complete yet, and the gaps say as much as the scores, to my mind.
BankStore publishes Bank Index, building its profiles from financial registers and then grading each firm on what a business needs. Its United Kingdom section lists 498 payment institutions beside 487 banks. Somewhere on that list sits the company that holds a shop's card takings overnight, and it's rarely the name printed on the terminal.
A few evenings went into reading the profiles of the firms behind the machines on British counters. I'd like every shop owner to see what those profiles say, what they can't say yet, and how I'd use them before signing a terminal contract.
Card payment providers UK: who's behind the machine?
The brand on the terminal and the company on the contract are often different things. A reader in a café might carry one name, be rented through a second firm and settle through a third, and each of those can sit under a different licence in a different country.
Bank Index profiles the licensed entity, not the logo. That's awkward at first, because searching for a brand can land on a sister company in Dublin, Stockholm or Atlanta. It's also the whole point, since the entity holds the money.
Our earlier note comparing card machines dug into that question for SumUp, Square and Worldpay. This one takes a wider view and looks at the licence status on every profile a British shop is likely to meet.
Reading the licence status on a profile
Each profile carries a status under the company's name, and the wording is careful. Among the card firms covered here, the statuses fall into four grades.
The strongest grade reads "License verified manually," and Stripe Payments UK carries it. That means a person has read the register entry and the firm's own pages, and the profile lists the FCA as regulator under reference 900461.
Next comes "License confirmed on a regulator's own list." DNA Payments, Paymentsense and Handepay, trading for two decades, show this one, each regulated by the FCA, and so does Global Payments Limited, authorised in Malta in 2012.
Below that sits "License a regulator is named, but the license is not confirmed." myPOS, an e-money firm founded in Dublin in 2014, has this status, so the regulator is known but the licence itself hasn't been matched yet.
The weakest grade reads "License listed in a register, with no license record yet." Elavon, Inc., the US card acquirer founded in 1991 and owned by U.S. Bancorp, shows it on its American profile.
None of these grades says a firm is unsafe. They say how much has been checked. A shop can close the gap in ten minutes on the FCA's own register, as our note on FCA authorisation explains.
Stripe's UK profile, line by line
Stripe Payments UK Limited, authorised since 2018, is the clearest example of a finished profile among British card firms. It scores 6.09 overall, and its summary says plainly that "It is not a bank and does not lend."
Its fee mark of 7.5 rests on "Published flat-rate UK card pricing from 1.5% plus 20p, with no setup, monthly or hidden fees stated." On a £20 sale, that comes to 50p. Because the number is public, a shop can hold it up against any quote a salesperson brings.
Onboarding scores 8.0, with a catch spelled out. Merchants can sign up the same day, "though payouts begin only after Stripe's underwriting review completes." A shop opening on a Saturday shouldn't apply on the Friday.
Customer satisfaction is the weak line, at 2.0. The profile cites a Trustpilot average of 1.6 from 17,471 reviews, "with recurring complaints about sudden account suspensions." I'd want to know that before the takings start to build up in the account.
Strength sits at 5.0, because the UK entity is unrated and the group's accounts aren't broken out for it. The profile also notes the firm "offers no FSCS-covered deposits," so money waiting for payout is protected by safeguarding, not by the compensation scheme.
Card payment processors UK: what the fee lines reveal
Fees are where card payment processors UK shops use differ most in how much they show, and a gap of half a per cent on every sale adds up fast. Stripe publishes its rate, and its profile scores it on that basis.
Teya, a London firm founded in 2022, has one fee line with real content. The mark of 7.5 rests on the company's own page, and that page says its business account "has no monthly fees and no setup fees." The profile is honest about the ceiling, since card prices weren't on that page and the mark can't climb higher without them.
Most of the other British card firms carry a default fee mark of 5.5. A 5.5 is what the index gives a firm of that licence type when no price list has been read, so it gives no signal about the real cost.
That's why I treat a default as homework, not a verdict. A shop comparing quotes should ask each firm for its rate per card type, the monthly minimum and the exit fee, in writing, and a difference of half a per cent on cards can outweigh any monthly fee.
Why do most card terminal providers UK shops use show default scores?
Most card terminal providers UK merchants deal with haven't been read in full yet. Their profiles carry the same sentence on line after line, saying the firm "moves money and issues accounts but takes no deposits and makes no loans."
That line describes the type of licence, not the product. The marks beside it, mostly between five and six, are what the index gives any payment firm of that type without specific evidence. Paymentsense, DNA Payments and Handepay all show the pattern, with overall scores between 4.9 and 5.5.
The method explains where such defaults come from. "Where those sources say nothing specific, the score reflects what that type of institution typically offers," it says, and "A need with no information stays blank."
I'd rather see a default labelled as a default than a confident number built on nothing. Each of these profiles invites users to rate the firm, and a few ratings from real shop owners would shift them faster than any press release.
Marketing claims next to register facts
Every profile quotes a line from the firm's own website, and the contrast with the register facts can be useful. Paymentsense's profile carries its slogan: "Save up to 40% with Europe’s largest Merchant Services provider."
The index doesn't score that claim, and it shouldn't. A saving of up to 40 per cent depends on what a shop paid before, and only a statement from the old provider can show it.
What the profile does show is the licence: an FCA-registered payment firm whose strength line sits at the default of 4.0 because no accounts have been read yet. I'd put a slogan and a register entry side by side before believing either.
Who holds the takings overnight?
Strength matters for a card provider because it holds a shop's money between the sale and the payout. For a pub taking £3,000 a week by card, that can mean a few thousand pounds sitting with the provider at any moment.
On the default profiles, the strength line is short and frank. Teya's says its mark is "Based on the register's record of the company, not its accounts," and then adds a sentence I'd frame: "A long history is not a balance sheet."
Global Payments Limited and Paymentsense sit at 4.0 on strength, the default for their licence type. Stripe's UK arm reaches 5.0 on the same line.
Protection is the other half of the answer. E-money and payment firms must safeguard customer funds by keeping them apart from their own money, but those funds sit outside the FSCS. If a provider fails, safeguarded money should come back, though it can take weeks.
For a shop paid out every morning, that risk covers about 14 per cent of a week's takings. It grows with the balance, so a business that lets a week of takings pile up with its provider carries more of it than one paid out every morning.
Reviews: the line that warns about suspensions
Most of the British card firms in this note have no reviews on their profiles at all. Paymentsense, DNA Payments and Teya each show "No reviews yet" under the heading on what users say.
Stripe's UK entity is the exception, and its line is a warning rather than a score. A Trustpilot average of 1.6 over seventeen thousand reviews, with complaints about sudden suspensions, describes a real risk for any shop that relies on one provider.
My own rule for this risk is a simple one. Keep a second way of taking cards, even a cheap reader from another firm, so a frozen account doesn't close the till for a week.
Does it matter where the provider is licensed?
It has mattered more since EU passporting for British firms ended in 2021. A firm licensed in Ireland, Sweden or Malta can serve EU shops under one passport, but a British shop usually signs with a UK-authorised entity, and that's the profile to read.
The index also caps scores by licence country. Malta sits at the 74th percentile on the Global Payments Limited profile, so firms licensed there fall in the band capped at 9.0, and Britain, at the 91st, faces no cap from that rule at all.
For a shop owner, the practical step is short. Find the legal name in the signed agreement, then look up that exact name in the directory rather than the brand on the machine.
Best card machine for small business UK: reading a profile in order
There's no single best card machine for small business UK owners, and the profiles show why. The right one depends on how the shop sells, how fast it needs the money, and whether it ever takes payments online.
I'd read a profile in this order, top to bottom. The licence status comes first, then the fee line, to see whether a price is published at all, and onboarding comes next, with any note about when payouts start, then satisfaction with its review count.
Strength comes after all of that for a small shop taking under £5,000 a week. With £300 or so in transit on a normal day, safeguarding and payout speed matter more than the provider's balance sheet.
The list of UK payment institutions is the place to start, and the profiles for Stripe Payments UK, Teya and Paymentsense show the full range of what a shop will find there, from a finished profile to a default one.
What the profiles can't tell a shop
Bank Index is candid about what its scores rest on. "Scores are editorial judgments based on those facts and on the BankStore team's aggregated experience," in the words of the method, with public facts as the only input.
A profile can't price a terminal contract either. Rental fees, monthly minimums, contract length and exit fees depend on the deal, and our note on free terminals shows how a free reader can still cost money. An accountant can compare two written quotes better.
Nor can a profile say when the money lands, because settlement times differ by provider and by plan, and they can change when a shop moves to a new tariff, as our clearing time note explains.
Questions people ask
Which UK card firms have full profiles?
The UK section of Bank Index lists 498 payment institutions. Among card firms, Stripe Payments UK has a full profile scored at 6.09 overall, and Paymentsense, DNA Payments, Handepay and Teya show register-based profiles with default scores.
Is my card machine provider a bank?
Usually it isn't a bank at all, legally speaking. Stripe Payments UK's profile states that "It is not a bank and does not lend," and the register-based profiles describe firms that take no deposits, so their customers' money is safeguarded rather than covered by the FSCS.
How do I compare card terminal providers fairly?
Start with the legal entity named in the paperwork and its licence grade. Then compare published prices, payout conditions and the number of reviews, and treat a default score as a gap to fill rather than a verdict.