What is the Best Payment Gateway for Businesses in 2022?

The problem is, there are so many different options available out there, each with its own pros and cons that it could be challenging to find the right one based on your needs and requirements.

Fortunately, we’re here to help. In this blog, we’ll look at some of the best payment gateways for businesses in 2022.

What is a payment gateway?

Before looking at the best payment gateways for businesses, let’s first recap what a payment gateway is. Simply put, you can think of a payment gateway as the online equivalent for an in-store point-of-sale terminal. So, when one of your customers pays with a credit card on your eCommerce store, the credit card information is securely passed between the customer, you, and the customer’s bank.

The payment gateway then verifies if the charge on the customer’s card has been approved by their bank and then submits the charge for settlement.

Now we've covered that, let's run over our top picks for payment gateways in 2022. We've included their features and pricing, so you can decide for yourself which takes the gold.

PayPal

No list of the best payment gateways for businesses in the UK would be complete without mentioning PayPal. Simply put, it’s one of the most popular payment gateways out there. It’s easy to see why when you consider how easy the platform is to implement into your website. Another benefit of Paypal is the flexibility it offers to customers by giving them a huge variety of payment options to choose from.

This ease of use and flexibility does come with a major drawback, though. When customers pay on your site, they’ll be taken off-site to a PayPal payment page. Although this fosters trust with customers, it’s never ideal as you want customers to stay on your site for as long as possible. Another drawback of the platform is that it does charge a monthly fee and chargeback fees.

Features:

• Pay in 3 that lets customers split payments into three equal instalments.
• Recurring payments and subscriptions.
• Invoices and estimates.
• In-person payments.
• QR-code payments.

Pricing:

• Fees range from 1.20% to 3.50% plus 20p to 30p depending on the specific product and pricing option.

Stripe

Stripe is another popular payment gateway used by many businesses in the UK. What sets it apart from its competition is that it makes its payment gateways available to merchants through various APIs that they can integrate into their eCommerce stores. Keep in mind, though, these APIs can be tricky, especially if you don’t have any technical knowledge.

This gives merchants the benefit of an excellent payment gateway but with the option to totally customise its look and feel to fit in with their brand. Apart from this, the platform also offers several other integrations that allow store owners to integrate their payment gateway with many of the tools they already use. Moreover, Stripe charges no monthly, setup, or hidden fees

Features:

• Accept payments from all major credit card issuers and in more than 135 currencies.
• Solid integration with other third-party applications.
• Extensive security features.
• APIs make the checkout experience fully customizable.
• Accepts a wide range of payment wallets.

Pricing:

Stripe charges 1.4% of the transaction value plus 20p as a transaction fee for European cards and 2.9% plus 20p as a fee on payments with non-European cards.

Worldpay

Worldpay processes 26 million transactions in countries around the world every day. It is, in fact, the largest payment service provider in the UK and it offers everything you could need to accept payments in your eCommerce store. In addition, it also gives merchants the ability to accept payments in-store, and telephonically. The platform also promises unparalleled security measures that protect both merchants and customers against fraud.

In addition to these features, the platform also gives you the ability to accept recurring payments and subscriptions and you’ll receive your funds quickly after an order is processed.

A major drawback of Worldpay is that it requires that you enter into a fairly lengthy contract when you sign up. As a result, you’ll also have to pay early termination fees if you cancel the contract earlier.

Features:

• Accepts payments from all major credit card issuers and in more than 116 currencies.
• Recurring and subscription payments.
• Advanced security and fraud protection measures.
• Excellent support.
• Integration options.

Pricing:

Worldpay offers two pricing options. The first, Gateway Standard, is priced at £19 per month and includes 350 transactions. The second, Gateway Advanced, is priced at £45 per month and includes 850 transactions and several other additional features including international and additional payment methods.

Cardstream

What sets Cardstream apart from most other payment gateways is that it’s the only independent UK payment gateway that provides businesses with a white label payment platform. As such, these businesses can completely rebrand the solution to fit their branding and preferences.

As mentioned, the platform is also independent meaning that businesses can use the platform to process payments no matter what bank they bank at which makes it a convenient solution for many businesses. Despite it being independent, it can still connect businesses to a wide range of global payment acquirers and payment schemes.

Features:

• Fully white-label capable.
• The platform is PCI-DSS Level 1 Certified which means excellent security.
• Advanced fraud prevention measures.
• Multicurrency support.
• Alternative payment options include PayPal, Apple Pay, Android Pay, and MasterPass.

Pricing:

Pricing for Cardstream is £18 per month and includes 350 transactions. Any transactions exceeding the 350 transactions are charged at 9.9p per transaction.

Amazon Pay

Amazon has established itself as the largest eCommerce retailer in the world and is now taking on the payment processing industry. One of the platform’s benefits is that it gives shoppers the ability to check out with the payment information stored in their Amazon accounts. This, in turn, reduces friction in the checkout process and makes it faster and quicker to pay.

For businesses, the benefit of using Amazon Pay is that they’ll get exposure to Amazon’s global customer base. Apart from these benefits, the platform provides a fully-featured payment gateway that competes well with other options in the market.

Features:

• Multicurrency support.
• The same security features that underpin Amazon UK.
• The ability to accept voice payments by using Amazon Alexa.

Pricing:

When using Amazon Pay, you’ll pay a fee of 2.7% plus 30p per transaction if your transaction volume is below £50,000. If your transaction volume is above this level, you’ll be able to apply for a discount.

Opayo

Opayo was established in 2020 when Elevon purchased the UK and Irish operations of Sage Pay. Since then, it has become one of the largest payment processors in the UK.

The platform can process payments in over 25 currencies and gives merchants a variety of customisation options depending on whether they’re using a hosted or self-hosted integration. Its self-hosted integrations include Woocommerce and BigCommerce and its hosted integrations include Shopify.

Another benefit of the platform is its reliability. Here, it’s rarely offline which means merchants don't need to worry about losing any sales due to their payment processor not being able to accept payments.

Features:

• Multicurrency support.
• Excellent security and fraud protection measures.
• Analytics capabilities.
• Excellent support.
• Recurring and deferred payments.

Pricing:

Opayo offers three different pricing options. The first, Flex, is priced at £25 per month and includes 350 transactions. The second, Plus, is priced at £45 per month and includes 500 transactions per month and additional support. Finally, Corporate is a bespoke solution with custom pricing that offers more than 3000 transactions per month.

Shopify Payments

Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms in the world and it powers thousands of online stores. When you open a Shopify account, Shopify Payments will be included. It’s a fully-featured payment gateway that allows you to accept a variety of payment methods including Visa and Mastercard credit cards, American Express, Apple Pay and Google Pay. It also offers extensive security and fraud protection measures.

Features:

• Extensive eCommerce features.
• Free trial.
• Affordable fees.
• Multicurrency support
• 24/7 support

Pricing:

Pricing starts at $29 per month for the Basic Shopify Plan. Here, you’ll pay 2.9% plus 30c per transaction. Pricing for the Shopify plan is $79 per month. Here, you’ll pay 2.6% plus 30c per transaction. Finally, pricing for the Advanced Shopify plan is $299 per month. Here, you’ll pay 2.4% plus 30c per transaction.

The bottom line

Hopefully, this post showed you some best payment gateways for businesses in the UK and will make the process of choosing the right one easier. Once you’ve found the right one and can start accepting payments, you’ll also need an accounting partner to help you manage your business’s finances.

And this is where Accountancy Cloud comes in. With our outsourced finance teams for startups, we will get you organised. We’ll help set up your full finance stack for scale, including preferred cash–sweep accounts, payroll, and expense management. We’re your trusted partner.

To learn more about Accountancy Cloud and how we can help you, get in touch to discuss your unique needs and requirements.