How to Accept Your First Card Payment With SumUp

For a freelancer, market trader, tutor, or small shop, the barrier to taking card payments used to be a bank merchant account and a monthly contract. SumUp removed it: a reader, a free account, and a per-transaction fee. This is the step-by-step guide to accepting your first payment — and, more usefully, an explanation of what that per-transaction fee is actually made of, so you can tell when the flat-rate model is saving you money and when it has quietly started costing you. For where card acceptance sits in a wider self-employed setup, see our best money tools for freelancers guide.

The pressure to accept cards is not imaginary. The European Central Bank recorded 44.0 billion card payments in the euro area in the first half of 2025, up 9.6% year on year, at an average value of around €38 per payment — and 83% of in-person card payments by volume were contactless. A cash-only stall is not neutral. It is turning away the default payment behaviour of most of its customers.

What You Need to Start

• A SumUp account (free to open).
• Identity and payout details — a bank account to receive your money.
• A card reader, or a phone that supports reader-free tap-to-pay where available.

SumUp operates across the EEA and UK, and in many regions sole traders and freelancers can sign up without a limited company. You can begin at SumUp.

Where Your Fee Actually Goes

Almost every guide tells you SumUp charges "a percentage". Nobody explains what that percentage is buying, which is why merchants can't tell a good deal from a bad one. Every card payment you accept splits three ways.

Interchange is the largest and most regulated slice. It flows from your acquirer to the bank that issued your customer's card. In the EU it is hard-capped: Regulation (EU) 2015/751 states that payment service providers "shall not offer or request a per transaction interchange fee of more than 0,2 % of the value of the transaction for any debit card transaction" (Article 3), and no more than 0.3% for credit (Article 4). The United States regulates the same fee differently — under the Federal Reserve's Regulation II, the cap on a covered debit transaction is 21 cents plus 5 basis points of transaction value, with up to 1 cent more for issuers meeting fraud-prevention standards, and issuers holding under $10 billion in assets are exempt entirely. That structural difference matters: the EU caps a percentage, the US caps mostly a flat cent amount, so small-ticket card acceptance is proportionally far more expensive in the US.

Scheme fees go to Visa or Mastercard for running the network. They are small, numerous, and not capped.

Acquirer margin is what is left — the part your provider keeps.

SumUp does not itemise these. It quotes one blended rate covering all three. This is a deliberate product decision, not an oversight. Traditional acquirers in the EU are required to unbundle: Article 9 of the same Regulation obliges them to specify merchant service charges and interchange fees separately for each card category and brand, unless the merchant asks in writing for bundled pricing. Flat-rate providers sidestep the complexity by selling you a single number. You pay a premium for that simplicity, and the premium is largest on exactly the transaction type that is cheapest to process: a consumer debit tap.

Step 1: Create the Free SumUp Account

Sign up with your email and business details, then complete identity verification and add the bank account where you want to be paid out. There is no monthly fee on the standard pay-as-you-go plan — the cost is a percentage taken from each transaction, so you pay only when you actually get paid. That is what makes it suitable for occasional or seasonal takings.

Verification is a regulatory requirement, not a formality. Your provider is a regulated payment institution and must identify you before it can settle funds to you. Expect to supply proof of identity and, depending on your country and structure, proof of address or business registration. Budget a few days rather than a few minutes if you are on a deadline.

Step 2: Choose Your Reader (or Go Reader-Free)

Two paths:

• A card reader. SumUp sells a small Bluetooth card reader for a one-off cost. It pairs with the SumUp app on your phone or tablet and takes chip, contactless, and mobile-wallet payments. This is the reliable choice for regular in-person takings.
• Reader-free tap-to-pay. In some regions and on supported phones, you can accept contactless payments directly on the phone with no separate reader at all — useful if you want to start today with nothing to buy.

Pick the reader if you will take payments often; go reader-free to test the waters with zero upfront cost. The practical argument for the physical reader is not the technology, it is the battery and the queue: a dedicated reader keeps working when your phone is at 4%, and hands the customer a device rather than your unlocked phone.

Step 3: Take the First Payment

Open the SumUp app, enter the amount, and present the reader (or phone) to the customer. They tap, insert, or swipe their card, or use a mobile wallet. The app confirms the payment on screen, and you can send the customer a digital receipt by email or text. That is the entire flow — no terminal contract, no separate merchant ID to chase.

One thing will confuse you in week one: sometimes a contactless tap suddenly demands a PIN, apparently at random. It is not random. Under Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/389, the exemption from strong customer authentication for contactless payments at the point of sale only holds when the individual transaction is at or below €50, the cumulative total of contactless payments on that card since the last authentication is at or below €150, and there have been no more than five consecutive contactless transactions since then. Cross any one of those three thresholds and the card forces a PIN. Nothing has gone wrong with your reader, and telling a customer that calmly is better for the queue than restarting the app.

Step 4: Get Paid Out — and Where to Hold It

SumUp settles your takings to your linked bank account, typically within a few business days depending on your country. Check the settlement timetable for your market before you rely on it for cash flow — the gap between taking the money and having it is the single most common surprise for merchants moving off cash.

If you take payments in more than one currency — say you serve tourists or online customers abroad — the payout conversion is where margin quietly disappears. Holding funds in a multi-currency account such as Wise lets you receive and keep several currencies and convert when you choose, rather than accepting whatever rate is applied automatically at settlement. Airwallex covers similar ground for businesses with heavier cross-border flows, and we look at it in our Airwallex multi-currency business account review. The mechanics of how conversion margin is hidden inside an apparently free exchange rate are the same ones we take apart in our guide to hidden FX fees and dynamic currency conversion.

A Worked Example: What Flat-Rate Really Costs

Take the ECB's euro-area average ticket of €38 and assume a busy market stall doing 300 transactions a month — €11,400 in turnover. Assume a flat blended rate of 1.75%. Confirm the current figure for your country on SumUp's own pricing page before using this arithmetic for real; the rate varies by market and changes.

At 1.75%, you pay €199.50 a month, which is 66.5 cents per transaction.

Now price the floor. If that customer tapped an EEA consumer debit card, the capped interchange is 0.2% of €38 — about 7.6 cents. On a consumer credit card at 0.3%, about 11.4 cents. Add scheme fees and the true cost of processing that payment is somewhere near 10 to 15 cents. You paid 66.5. The difference is what you are handing over for a free account, no contract, no terminal rental, no PCI paperwork and no negotiation.

Is that worth it? Compare against an illustrative interchange-plus deal at interchange plus 0.3% plus 5 cents, with €25 a month in terminal rental. On the same €38 debit tap: 7.6 cents interchange, plus 11.4 cents margin, plus 5 cents fixed, equals 24 cents. Over 300 transactions that is €72, plus €25 rental, equals €97 a month — less than half the flat-rate bill.

The break-even is where 0.665N equals 0.24N plus 25. That solves to N of about 59 transactions a month, or roughly €2,235 in monthly card turnover at a €38 ticket. Below that, flat-rate wins because the fixed monthly cost dominates. Above it, and increasingly so as you grow, a contracted acquirer is cheaper on pure fees.

Run that calculation with your own average ticket, because the answer moves sharply. At a €150 average ticket the percentage-based flat rate hurts far more and the break-even arrives after only a handful of transactions. At a €6 average ticket — a coffee stand — the flat rate is genuinely competitive, and in a fixed-cent regime like the US Regulation II model, small tickets are punishing under almost any arrangement.

Flat-Rate vs Interchange-Plus vs Terminal Contract

The Card Types Where Blending Works in Your Favour

The EU interchange caps apply to consumer cards. Commercial and corporate cards are outside Chapter II's scope, and cards issued outside the EEA are not covered by the caps at all. When a tourist taps a US-issued premium rewards card, or a client pays with a corporate card, the real interchange your acquirer absorbs can be several times the capped consumer rate.

Under interchange-plus, that cost is passed straight through to you and your effective rate spikes. Under SumUp's blended rate, you pay the same percentage you always pay. If a meaningful share of your customers are foreign visitors or businesses paying on company plastic, blended pricing is not just simpler — it is a hedge, and the premium you resent on domestic debit taps is partly what funds it. If you are on the other side of that transaction and issuing the corporate cards, our guides to business credit cards for startups and the wider business cards hub cover the issuing side.

You Cannot Simply Pass the Fee to the Customer

A common instinct is to add a card surcharge and make the problem go away. In the EU and UK you generally cannot. Directive (EU) 2015/2366 (PSD2), at Article 62(4), bars payees from requesting charges for the use of payment instruments whose interchange fees are regulated under Chapter II of Regulation 2015/751 — that is, consumer debit and credit cards. Surcharging those is prohibited.

What remains legal is steering. Regulation 2015/751 explicitly protects a merchant's right to encourage customers toward a preferred payment method and to inform them about the relative cost of instruments, and PSD2 permits offering a discount for a particular instrument. The distinction is not cosmetic: a stated "2% card fee" is generally unlawful, while a "cash discount" priced into your list price is not. Rules differ outside the EEA and UK, so verify locally before you print a sign.

Who SumUp Is Wrong For

Flat-rate acceptance is a great default and a bad permanent answer. It is the wrong choice if:

• Your card turnover is consistently above the break-even. Once you are reliably past a few thousand a month, the flat rate is a standing tax you have chosen not to negotiate away.
• Your average ticket is large. A percentage on a €900 invoice is a serious sum for a transaction that costs no more to process than a €9 one. High-value B2B work usually belongs on a bank transfer.
• You need deep till, stock or accounting integration. Full EPOS ecosystems do more; you are buying simplicity, and simplicity has a ceiling.
• You depend on same-day settlement. If your cash cycle cannot absorb a multi-day payout, confirm settlement timing before committing.
• You are in a high-chargeback category. Flat-rate onboarding is fast because underwriting is light. Accounts in risk-heavy verticals can be reviewed, frozen, or closed with little notice, and that risk is the trade for skipping a merchant-account application.

The Bottom Line

SumUp turns "we only take cash" into taking cards within a week, with no monthly commitment — create the free account, choose a reader or go reader-free, take the payment, and get paid out. The fee you pay is mostly acquirer margin rather than the regulated interchange underneath it, which is a fair price for zero setup friction and a poor one once volume arrives. Work out your own break-even, revisit it every six months, and hold multi-currency takings in an account like Wise so payout conversion is not eating what you just earned. When the arithmetic turns against the flat rate, that is a sign of growth, not a mistake — but only if you act on it. For how card acceptance fits alongside the accounts and cards a small business needs, our sibling sites https://banktopp.com and https://yieldnav.com go deeper on business banking and managing what you earn.

This is information, not financial advice. Fees, features, availability, and regulatory thresholds vary by country and change — the worked example above uses illustrative rates to show the method, not to quote any provider's current pricing. Confirm current terms with each provider before relying on them.