How Much Do Card Payments Cost Restaurants in the UK?
How much do card payments cost UK restaurants?
Anywhere from 0.4% to 2.5% of each transaction. Where you land depends on the card, the pricing model and the provider. Across a normal mix of cards, most restaurants end up paying somewhere around 0.8%–1.5%.
Your own number comes down to which cards your customers carry, how much you sell online, and how hard you've pushed your provider on price.
Where the fee goes
Each card payment is split three ways.
- Interchange goes to the cardholder's bank. Visa and Mastercard set it, not your provider, and in the UK it's capped: 0.2% for consumer debit, 0.3% for consumer credit.
- The scheme fee goes to Visa or Mastercard. It's usually 0.1%–0.3% and it changes from time to time.
- The acquirer margin is what your payment processor keeps. This is the only part where providers really compete.
So when a provider quotes "1.2% + 10p", interchange and scheme fees are already inside that number. Whatever's left is their margin.
Typical card payment rates for UK restaurants
| Payment type | Typical effective rate |
|---|---|
| UK consumer debit, in-person | 0.4%–0.9% |
| UK consumer credit, in-person | 0.9%–1.6% |
| Commercial or business card | 1.5%–2.5% |
| Online orders (card-not-present) | 1.0%–2.5% |
Say a restaurant takes £80,000 a month on cards, mostly consumer debit and credit. At an effective rate of 1.1%–1.3%, that's £880–£1,040 a month in processing fees. Terminal rental, PCI fees and minimum service charges come on top.
Why rates vary so much
Card type matters most. Interchange on a commercial credit card can be five to ten times what it is on a consumer debit card, so if you get a lot of corporate lunches or people paying on expense cards, your blended rate goes up.
Online orders cost more to process because nobody hands over a physical card and fraud is more common. If you run your own online ordering website or app, build that higher rate into your numbers.
Volume gives you leverage. A single café doing £10,000 a month doesn't have much to bargain with. A group doing £500,000 a month does, and at that size negotiating the blended rate down or moving to interchange-plus can take a real chunk off the bill.
Then there's the pricing model. Blended pricing charges one rate for every card. It's simple, but if most of your customers pay by debit you're overpaying on all those cheap transactions. Interchange-plus passes through the actual cost of each card and adds a fixed margin. Once your volume is decent, it usually works out cheaper.
Fixed costs that add to the real price
The percentage is only part of the bill. Most contracts also include:
| Fee type | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Terminal rental | £15–£30/month per device |
| PCI DSS compliance | £5–£15/month |
| Minimum monthly service charge | £10–£25/month |
| Chargeback handling | £15–£25 per dispute |
Four terminals at £25 a month is £1,200 a year before anyone taps a card. Spread over your monthly volume, fixed fees can add 0.3%–0.5% to your effective rate.
Online vs in-person payment costs
A lot of restaurants never compare these two. Counter payments and online payments often go through different providers, on different rates.
A restaurant taking online orders through its own website might be paying 0.8% on the card terminal and 1.8%–2.5% on the online side with a separate provider. If online is 40% of revenue, the real blended cost is well above the counter rate everyone quotes.
Putting both channels on one integrated platform means one payment contract and one rate.
How to pay less
Put in-person and online payments with one provider. Two providers means two contracts, two fee structures and two sets of fixed charges. Cutting it to one usually lowers the total.
Negotiate. Every major processor will go below its published rates. What they offer depends on your volume, your chargeback history and how long you'll sign for.
If most of your transactions are consumer debit and you're doing more than £20,000 a month on cards, interchange-plus is almost always cheaper than blended.
Check your terminal rental. If you haven't renegotiated it in two years or more, you're probably paying too much.
Keep chargebacks down. A high chargeback rate tells acquirers you're a risk, and they respond with higher rates or by closing the account. Clear refund policies and orders that actually turn up on time both help.
Flipdish and restaurant payments
Flipdish puts POS, online ordering and payment processing in one system. Counter and online payments go through the same place, show up in the same reports and sit under one payment contract.
If you're reviewing what you pay, start with the total across every channel, fixed fees included - not the counter rate on its own.