The 1% Rate That Isn't Really 1%

When you buy an EPOS system, you're not just choosing the screen on your counter. You're also deciding who processes your payments, what rate you're charged, which functions cost extra, and how hard it will be to leave. This is where an apparently cheap system becomes an expensive one.

The advertised rate may not be the best rate

Square's standard face-to-face card rate is currently 1.75%. You can accept that, register online, and start taking payments without speaking to anyone. But Square also says businesses processing more than £200,000 a year may be eligible for custom pricing.

That creates two customers with identical turnover, paying different rates. The first knows rates can be negotiable and asks. The second trusts the advertised price and signs up online. One pays less, simply because they knew to ask.

This matters more than it sounds. An independent hospitality business taking £5,000 to £10,000 a week on cards processes somewhere between £260,000 and £520,000 a year, both comfortably above Square's own published threshold.

Weekly card sales	Cost at 1.75%	Cost at 1%	Annual difference
£5,000	£4,550	£2,600	£1,950
£10,000	£9,100	£5,200	£3,900

Over five years, that gap could run to somewhere between £9,750 and £19,500. And that's before a paid EPOS subscription, hardware, or any additional software is added on top.

A well-known brand earns trust. That trust shouldn't stop you asking whether a better rate is sitting there for the taking.

The obvious fix isn't the right one either

It would be easy to conclude the answer is simple: find a 1% blended rate and be done with it. It isn't that simple.

A blended rate applies one percentage across several card types. It's straightforward, predictable, easy to understand, and in the quotes we see for independent hospitality businesses taking £5,000 to £10,000 a week, blended rates around 1% aren't unusual. For some businesses, that's genuinely good value.

But debit cards remain the UK's most-used payment method by some distance. UK Finance recorded 26.1 billion debit-card payments in 2024, against five billion credit and charge-card payments. A debit-heavy business may well be better served by separate rates rather than one blended figure. 

We regularly see consumer debit-card rates as low as 0.3%. That doesn't mean your total cost will be 0.3%. The full picture can include fixed charges per transaction, card-machine rental, authorisation charges, monthly minimums, scheme and processing fees, and higher rates for credit, commercial, international and online cards. A low headline debit rate can mislead just as easily as a high blended one, if the rest of the structure goes unchecked.

What to actually do with this

The lesson isn't that one model beats the other. It's that you should be able to compare both, properly.

Ask any provider to apply their proposal to at least three of your recent card-processing statements, and to show you the complete annual cost in pounds, not a percentage. The best payment deal was never the one with the most attractive headline figure. It's the one that produces the lowest total cost for the way your business actually takes payments.

Already holding a couple of quotes?

Send us the proposals and your last three processing statements. We'll run the real numbers against your actual turnover and card mix and tell you straight where each one lands, no charge, no catch.

Fact-checking notes

Prices and provider terms were reviewed on 23 July 2026 and may change. Businesses should always review the quotation, order form and contractual documents applying to their own purchase.

1. Square currently lists Restaurants Free at £0 per month and Restaurants Plus at £69 per month per location. It publishes a 1.75 per cent card-present rate, custom pricing above £200,000 of annual processing, different support levels and separate prices for hardware and additional products. View source