How to take card payments online in 2026, and what it really costs…

What you actually need

A payment provider. Stripe, PayPal, Square and SumUp are the names most small UK businesses meet. You open an account online, tell them who you are and which bank account to pay, and from then on they handle the card: checking it, taking the money, and passing it to you a few days later, less their fee. This is what a merchant account used to be, without the bank appointment.

A checkout. The page where a buyer types in their card. Usually the provider supplies it, so the card details go to them and never touch your website. Your website’s job is to say what is for sale, at what price, and send the buyer to that checkout.

Something to sell from. A shop page, a booking page, a course, a membership. This is where website platforms differ most, and where the second fee can come in.

What the providers charge

These are the standard pay-as-you-go rates for an online payment, from each company’s own UK pricing page, checked on 14 September 2026. Stripe, Square and SumUp charge no monthly fee on this pricing.

A few things move these numbers:

• Premium and business cards cost more. Stripe charges 2.8% plus 20p for a premium UK card instead of 1.5% plus 20p.
• Currency conversion costs extra. Stripe adds 2% when it has to convert the money into pounds.
• SumUp has a paid plan. Payments Plus, at £19 a month, lowers SumUp’s in-person rates. Its online rate stays at 2.5%.

For a small business, the gap between providers is real but modest: a few pence to about 65p on a £40 sale. The bigger difference is usually what your website platform adds.

The fee on top of the fee

Some website platforms add their own charge to every sale, on top of what the payment provider takes.

Shopify. On the Basic plan, a sale through Shopify’s own payment system costs 2% plus 25p. If you use a different provider instead, Shopify adds a further 2% on top of that provider’s fee. The full Shopify bill is in Shopify 2026 pricing, explained - what a small shop really pays.

Squarespace. On Squarespace’s new website plans, the cheapest one, Basic, takes 2% of every product sale as a transaction fee, and 7% of every sale of digital products such as courses and memberships. Core takes nothing on products and 5% on digital products. That is on top of the card fee: with Squarespace’s own payment system, a standard UK card costs 2% plus 25p on Basic and Core. So a £40 product sale on Basic loses £1.85, and you keep £38.15.

Over a year, the gap builds up. A hundred and fifty sales of £40, which comes to £6,000, costs £120 in card fees at Stripe’s standard rate. The same sales on Squarespace Basic with its own payments cost £277.50, card fee and transaction fee together.

Course and membership platforms often work the same way. What an online course platform really costs in 2026 - Podia, Kajabi, Teachable and the rest lists which ones take a share of your sales.

Where Bernard fits

Bernard is one option, for a small business that wants its website and its shop in one place. Sales go through your own Stripe account, and Bernard takes 0% of them. The only fee on a sale is Stripe’s own, at Stripe’s standard rate unless you have agreed a different one with them.

• The shop is £200 a year added to the £200 site, so £400 a year for the two together, with the move of your existing site included. You can sell physical things with sizes, colours and stock counts (sizes, colours and stock), charge one flat postage fee per order (postage), and sell files that buyers download after paying (digital downloads).
• Courses are £600 a year added to the site. Memberships come with courses: people pay you monthly or yearly, on your own Stripe account (paid memberships).
• The largest size, £1,000 a year, includes the shop and courses. The full list is on the pricing page.

The account is yours. Your payment history, your customers’ receipts and your payouts live in your own Stripe account, and they stay there if you ever leave (where the money goes).

What it does not do: payments run through Stripe, so you connect your Stripe account before anyone can buy. Until then the shop shows its products marked “opening soon” (why people can’t buy yet). Buyers pay by card at Stripe’s checkout, not with PayPal. Stripe does not offer PayPal on sales that a platform like Bernard runs through your own Stripe account, and you cannot paste in a PayPal button or anyone else’s checkout code. If your customers expect to pay with PayPal, that matters. And if the shop is the whole business, with a big stock list and serious volume, a shop-first platform such as Shopify is built for exactly that.

How to choose

1. Start with how you sell. Mostly online, or mostly in person with a card reader? Square and SumUp are built around the card reader. Stripe and PayPal are built around online checkout.
2. Check what your website platform adds. Look for “transaction fee” on its pricing page, and check whether it changes if you use your own payment provider. A 2% platform fee costs more than the difference between any two providers above.
3. Count your likely sales. At a handful of sales a month, any of these providers is fine and the platform matters more. At hundreds, a few pence per sale adds up to real money.
4. Keep the account in your name. If the payment account belongs to your web designer or your platform, ask what happens to it, and to your customers’ history, if you ever move.