I went looking for a way to compare card machines that wasn't somebody's sales page, and I ended up in Bank Index, a public directory that scores banks and payment firms from 0 to 10 on what a business needs, with a reason and a source link on every line. I had assumed it would hand me a league table. It didn't, and I'm glad, because the table I had in my head was wrong.
What it gave me was 3 providers with full cards, 3 more with near-identical scores set by default, and one awkward question sitting under all of them: which company would you actually be signing with? I'll keep coming back to that, because it changes how you read almost every number below.
The one UK card that's complete
Of the 3 full cards, Worldpay's is the only one that belongs to the company a British shop would sign with. It's Worldpay (UK) Limited, at 25 Walbrook in London, on the FCA's list of e-money firms under reference 1031413 since 19 November 2025. The card even notes that the register gives an Atlanta address, which is the new owner's head office rather than the UK company's. I liked that detail a lot. Somebody read the entry properly.
Its fee line scores 3.0, and the reason is short: "No rates are published for UK small businesses, only tailored custom pricing, and online applications require a minimum 18-month contract." That's the lowest fee score I saw. It isn't a verdict on the price, which might be perfectly fair for your shop. It's a verdict on the fact that you can't see the price before you're tied in.
I'd have scored it the same way. A price you only learn from a sales call is a price you can't compare, and a comparison is what you came for.
The rest of the card is steadier. Onboarding gets 5.0, because you can apply online with no joining fee, although no time to go live is published anywhere on the small business pages, which matters if your old provider's notice period runs out on a Friday and you need the new reader working by Monday morning. The UK line gets 7.0. It also mentions next-day settlement for merchants. Customer satisfaction gets 7.0, on a Trustpilot rating of 4.2 from 10,415 reviews.
Then there's the detail I keep thinking about: 70 per cent of those reviews are five-star and 25 per cent are one-star. Almost nobody sits in the middle. That's a provider people either love or can't stand, and a single average of 4.2 hides it completely.
SumUp, and the card that isn't quite yours
SumUp's card is friendlier. Fees score 8.0, because the business account has no monthly, annual or opening fee and the card fee is 1.69 per cent pay-as-you-go in person. Onboarding scores 8.0, since signup is free and online. Satisfaction scores 8.0, on 4.2 from 56,311 reviews.
It's the best set of scores I found for a card machine, and I was ready to write that down. Then I read the summary, and I had to take it back. I was wrong about SumUp, or at least about which SumUp I was looking at.
The card is for SumUp Limited, an Irish company authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland on 27 October 2020. It says so clearly: the Irish licence covers the EEA side of the business, and the UK runs through a separate company, SumUp Payments Limited, authorised by the FCA. The 1.69 per cent comes from the Irish page, in euros, for Irish merchants.
So the provider with the best scores for a British shop is scored on the wrong company for a British shop. I find that genuinely awkward, and I don't think the index is at fault. It's being honest about which entity it read. That honesty is exactly what makes the comparison harder.
So is SumUp safe for a shop? That's the question people type, and the card's strength line gives a careful answer. It scores 4.5: unrated as a standalone company, one licensed subsidiary of a privately held group, with no capital figures of its own. That's not a warning sign. It's how most card machine providers are built. For a UK merchant the protection that matters is safeguarding at the UK company, which our note on FCA authorisation walks through step by step.
Square, scored as an American company
Square's card has the same problem from the other side of the Atlantic. The fee line scores 6.0 on US prices, the satisfaction line uses Square's American reviews, and the strength line describes Block, Inc., the listed parent in the United States.
The UK line scores 5.0, and its reason says no UK banking or e-money licence for Square itself was found. I'd read that with care, because our earlier piece found Squareup Europe Ltd on the Financial Services Register on 23 September, so the card and the register don't quite agree. I suspect the card searched for the brand while the register lists the entity, which is exactly the trap that piece was about. That's a guess, and only a guess. I'd rather flag it than smooth it over.
The 3 cards that look the same
Paymentsense Limited, PayPal UK Ltd and Handepay have cards too, and they score 4.8, 4.8 and 4.9. Every one of them says the same thing under the score: "Scores set by its kind of institution." The Paymentsense and PayPal UK cards go further and say: "We have not checked this company by hand yet."
The lines inside are near-identical, down to the half point, because that's what an e-money firm gets before anybody reads its price list. It isn't a comparison of anything yet. It's a placeholder with a decimal point, and I'd treat those 3 as blank on price.
I was a little disappointed, if I'm honest. Paymentsense came up in our earlier piece with 3 register records under one company number, and I'd hoped for its fee line. What the card does give you is the entity, and that isn't nothing. The PayPal UK card, for example, names Companies House company 14741686 and the Singapore and US parents above it, which is the kind of detail a comparison site never prints and a bookkeeper always wants.
What the cards don't score at all
None of the needs on these cards is about the reader itself. There's no line for battery life, for whether the terminal prints receipts, for how it behaves when the shop's wifi drops on a Saturday afternoon, or for whether it takes American Express at a sensible rate, which our Amex fees note covers separately. That's not a flaw so much as a boundary. The index scores the company behind the money, and the hardware is somebody else's job.
I found that a relief, honestly.
It does mean a directory can only take you halfway. It can tell you which company holds your takings, whether its prices are public, how many people have reviewed it and how solid the group behind it looks on paper. It can't tell you whether the reader will survive being dropped behind a busy counter. For that you still need a shop owner who's used one for a year, and you won't find them in a register.
A short aside about the word provider
An aside, because the search box treats every name on a card machine as the same kind of thing. A card machine provider can be the acquirer that actually holds your takings, a reseller that rents you the terminal and passes you on, or both at once. It has nothing to do with the logo on the reader. Handepay's card describes it as "UK card payment services for merchants", which is true and tells you almost nothing about which of those roles it plays for your shop.
Back to the till. The role matters because the contract names one company, and that's the company whose card is worth reading, whatever the terminal says on its screen.
How I'd compare card machines with it now
Start from your own quote, not the brand. Find the legal entity and its FCA reference on the paperwork, and look that entity up in the directory. If the only full card is for a sister company abroad, as it is for SumUp and Square, use it for the group's strength and reviews and ignore its prices.
Then read 4 lines: fees, onboarding, reviews and the UK line, in that order, because the first one decides whether the other three are worth your time and the last one tells you whether the card is even describing the company you'd be dealing with. The fee line tells you whether the price is public at all. The review line gives you a count, which matters more than the stars; 56,311 reviews and 10,415 reviews are different amounts of evidence. The UK line tells you which company the card thinks is serving British merchants.
After that, leave the directory for a while. Our free terminal note covers the contract terms that hide behind a free reader, and the clearing time note covers when the money actually lands. Any card machine comparison that skips those two isn't finished, however good its table looks.
What I couldn't settle
I cannot tell you what Worldpay charges a small shop, because the card couldn't find a published rate and I haven't found one either. The 18-month minimum is public. The price, though, still isn't published.
I cannot explain why Handepay's strength line scores 5.0 while Paymentsense's scores 4.0, when both are set by their kind of institution. I don't know whether one of them has filings the other lacks, and my guess is that it's a small difference in what the registers hold about each, but a guess is all it is. The cards don't explain the one-point gap, and I'd rather leave it unexplained than invent a reason for it.
And I keep thinking about SumUp scoring 8.0 on fees from an Irish price list. That one still bothers me a little. It's probably the most useful card of the 6, and it describes a company that most British shops will not sign a contract with, because their contract will be with the UK company next door, whose own card in the directory, if it gets one, may look quite different once somebody reads the British price list.
Questions people ask
How do I compare card machines fairly?
Start with the contract, not the brand. Compare the company named on your contract, the published price, the contract length and the number of reviews behind the rating. Bank Index shows all 4 for Worldpay's UK company, and for SumUp and Square only through their Irish and US companies.
Is SumUp safe for a UK business?
The card can't answer that alone. Its Bank Index card scores strength 4.5 because the group is privately held and unrated. The UK business runs through SumUp Payments Limited, authorised by the FCA, and the protection that applies to your takings is safeguarding rather than deposit insurance.
Why do some card machine providers score about the same?
Because their cards haven't been read by hand yet. Each card is dated, so check again later. Paymentsense, PayPal UK and Handepay score 4.8 to 4.9 on defaults set by their kind of institution, and each card says so right under the score.