- 1. Worldpay: Most popular online payment provider
- 2. PayPal: Best for fast online payment transfers
- 3. Stripe: Best full service provider
- 4. Amazon Pay: Best for business ease of use
- 5. Shopify Payments: Best specialist online payments gateway
- 6. Sage Pay: Best method for online security
- 7. Cardstream: Best for customisation
So you want to take online card payments? You’ll know that you need a payment gateway, which allows you to quickly and easily enhance your business’ payment offering.
A payment gateway allows you to increase the ways in which your business can accept payments, and so helps create the potential for more sales. By more efficiently managing the payments that come in through your website, this helps to improve your customers’ experience, as well as freeing up time for you to focus your efforts on other areas of your business that need your attention.
With a range of providers out there, offering a range of pricing options, it’s important to get to know the market to compare quotes and providers, with the aim of helping you to save money and find the best fit for your business.
Top seven payment gateway providers at a glance:
| Payment gateway | Best for | Starting price |
|---|---|---|
| Worldpay | Popularity and familiarity | £19.95 |
| PayPal | Transfers | £20/mo |
| Stripe | Full service | £15 |
| Amazon Pay | Ease of use | 3.4% processing fee per transaction |
| Shopify Payments | Specialist gateway provider | £23/month |
| Sage Pay | Security | £20.90/month |
| Cardstream | Customisation | £18/month |
1. Worldpay: The UK’s number one payment gateway
Worldpay is the UK’s most popular payment processing company – currently processing around half of all payments taking place in the UK – and has some of the most flexible plans for small businesses.
Worldpay pros and cons:
- Ultra-secure payments
- Flexible price plans
- All major cards accepted
- Pay by link capabilities save time
- Variable transaction fees
- Not a complete ecommerce package
What’s the Worldpay payment gateway like?
Flexible – Accepts over a hundred currencies as well as all major debit and credit cards, even PayPal
Comprehensive – Comes complete with an online merchant account which acts as a checking account for card payments
Secure – Worldpay takes your online security very seriously, and comprehensive fraud screening protects you and your customers
Pay by link – Worldpay enables you to send payment links to customers, meaning you don’t need a website to take online payments, and can save time on chasing invoices
