If you're picking a UK payment provider in 2026, your shortlist runs Access PaySuite, Adfin, GoCardless, London & Zurich, Modulr, plus PayPal and Stripe. One can't collect a Bacs direct debit at all, two price invoicing on opposite principles, and the charge that decides your bill is often the one you meet when a payment fails.
In this article
The short version
- PayPal charges an invoice at its ordinary commercial rate, 2.9% + 30p, with no separate invoicing fee. Stripe Invoicing adds 0.4% or 0.5% per paid invoice on top of Stripe Payments pricing.
- Stripe charges £4.00 for a failed Bacs payment and £5.00 for a disputed one. GoCardless publishes no UK failure or chargeback fee.
- A UK business can't collect by Bacs direct debit through PayPal. Its direct debit support runs through Braintree, in euros, with the UK absent.
- Access PaySuite says "From 8p per transaction" on one page and "from just 4p" on another. Modulr prices outbound payments, and London & Zurich publishes no cap.
- Only PayPal dates its rate card, at "Last Updated: 15 July 2026". Stripe dates none of its three UK pages, and neither do we.
At a glance: the seven compared
| Provider | Best for | Published headline rate | Cap | Bacs direct debit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Access PaySuite | Volumes of similar-sized collections | "From 8p per transaction" | None published | Yes, three SUN models |
| Adfin | Collection and chasing on one rate | 1.0% + 20p | £4 on bank payments and direct debit | Yes |
| GoCardless | A rate card you can act on today | 1% + 20p on Standard | £4 on Standard | Yes |
| London & Zurich | A first mandate book with no SUN | "Pricing around 1%" | None published | Yes |
| Modulr | Flat per-collection fees with your own SUN | Not published for collections | Not published | Yes |
| PayPal | Consumer trust at the checkout | 2.9% + 30p | None | No |
| Stripe | Mixed payment methods and developer control | 1.5% + 20p on standard UK cards | £4 on Bacs | Yes |
Read from each provider's own pages. Alphabetical, because no independent UK ranking exists.
What they publish, and what they leave out
Comparison pages fill every cell of a table like this one. Several of these cells can't honestly be filled, and knowing which saves you more time than a guess would.
| Provider | Published | Not published |
|---|---|---|
| Access PaySuite | A floor rate, a worked example, "No setup fees", "No commitment" | Percentage fees, minimums, failure and chargeback charges, VAT |
| Adfin | Rates, the cap, the card uplifts, the high value uplift | VAT, any failure or chargeback fee, what puts a business on 1.0% instead of 1.5% |
| GoCardless | Four plans, caps, international rates, add-on prices, the VAT position | The amount of the refund fee its support pages say applies |
| London & Zurich | Indicative tiers, plus a promotion running at the time | Caps, setup fees, minimum term, failure charges, settlement timescale, VAT |
| Modulr | Plan pricing for outbound payments | Any price at all for direct debit collection |
| PayPal | Card, wallet, QR and commercial rates, chargeback and dispute fees, an effective date | Any UK direct debit rate, any VAT position |
| Stripe | Card, Bacs, bank transfer and invoicing prices, failure and dispute fees | An effective date on any UK pricing page, and its UK VAT position |
Two providers address VAT, and only one gives a clean answer. GoCardless charges VAT on transaction fees invoiced to UK merchants, so 1% + 20p reads as 1.2% + 24p if you can't recover it. Stripe's UK pricing page says nothing either way, and its global tax page says it doesn't charge VAT on fees to European account holders outside a named list of jurisdictions that excludes the UK, so your own Stripe invoice is where you'll find out. Nobody else here states a position, ours included.
Invoicing, priced two opposite ways
If you send invoices instead of running a checkout, the two biggest names here charge on opposite principles.
PayPal Invoicing carries no rate of its own. "PayPal Invoicing has no setup or monthly fees", and you're charged the ordinary commercial transaction rate when an invoice is paid. On the UK card that's 2.9% + 30p, under a row labelled "All Other Commercial Transactions", and no invoicing row appears on the fee page at all.
Stripe Invoicing stacks. "Stripe Invoicing has no fixed fees or setup costs, but Stripe Payments pricing will apply", and on top you pay 0.4% per paid invoice on Starter or 0.5% on Plus. No free allowance appears on the UK page.
On a £1,000 invoice, here's what that costs you:
| £1,000 invoice, paid by | Stripe Invoicing, Starter | PayPal Invoicing |
|---|---|---|
| Standard UK card | £15.20 + £4.00 = £19.20 | £29.30 |
| Business or commercial card | £28.20 + £4.00 = £32.20 | £29.30 |
| Bacs direct debit | £4.00 + £4.00 = £8.00 | Not offered in the UK |
Our arithmetic on Stripe's and PayPal's published rates, VAT excluded. Neither vendor publishes a worked example.
So Stripe's cheapest route to a paid invoice costs roughly a quarter of PayPal's, and its dearest costs more. Stripe defines premium as "Commercial, corporate, or business cards issued by Visa and Mastercard", so if you invoice other businesses, expect a good share of your payments on that rate.
What a failed payment costs you
Two providers here publish the same Bacs headline, 1% capped at £4, then diverge on what you're charged when a collection doesn't work.
Stripe publishes £4.00 per failed payment and £5.00 per disputed payment, plus £20.00 for each dispute you receive on cards. GoCardless states that "Failure fees only apply in the US, Germany and Austria", and says the same of chargeback fees, so on its published record a UK failure costs you nothing.
Put that £4.00 beside the capped fee on a £400 collection and they're the same number, on our arithmetic from Stripe's own figures, so one failure cancels out a similar successful collection. The other five publish no UK failure charge either way, so treat a failed collection as unpriced until a quote says otherwise.
PayPal prices the card side instead: £14.00 per chargeback, £12.00 per dispute, £24.00 on its high volume tariff.
1. Access PaySuite
The payments arm of The Access Group, and the current home of SmartDebit, acquired in September 2021.
What you get:
- Three models: the bureau's SUN, your own SUN through their bureau, or direct submission to Bacs
- Your name on your customer's statement with your own SUN, the bureau's name without one
- Automated retries, plus Xero and QuickBooks reached mainly through Zapier
The commercial detail:
- Pricing: "From 8p per transaction", "No setup fees" and "No commitment", with final pricing "based on volume and transaction value". Their SmartDebit page contradicts it at 4p, so get yours in writing.
- Reviews: Trustpilot 4.5 out of 5 from 346 reviews (user-reported). Their own page displays 4.7 from 369, overstating both.
- Who it suits: you collect similar-sized payments in volume, where pence each costs less than a percentage.
- Limitation: every route is a quote, and no page prices the bureau SUN or your own.
2. Adfin
A UK payments platform collecting by direct debit, card or open banking, chasing included.
What you get:
- One rate across methods, with the cap on bank payments and direct debit
- Chasing over email, WhatsApp or SMS from your own domain, free retries, a card fallback
- Two-way reconciliation in Xero or QuickBooks
The commercial detail:
- Pricing: 1.0% + 20p per successful transaction, capped at £4 on bank payments and direct debit, plus 0.15% above £2,000 on a direct debit. Cards add 1% (premium or EEA) or 2% (non-EEA). A second tier runs at 1.5% + 20p, and 0% + 20p for Accountants and Bookkeepers Club members (adfin.com/pricing).
- Reviews: Trustpilot 4.5 out of 5 from 12 reviews (user-reported).
- Who it suits: you collect recurring invoices and don't want a separate subscription for chasing.
- Limitation: no euros or dollars, no published VAT position, and no qualifying condition on the 1.5% tier.
3. GoCardless
The largest dedicated bank debit brand in the UK, with the only complete self-serve rate card here.
What you get:
- Four plans, the custom one for "businesses with £1m+ annual revenue or bespoke needs"
- Collection on a shared Service User Number on Standard, so you need no bank sponsorship
- Your name on your customer's statement for £50 a month, a custom checkout for £150
- Published international rates, plus 25% off standard fees for charities
The commercial detail:
- Pricing: three published plans, 1% + 20p capped at £4 on Standard, 1.25% + 20p capped at £5 on Advanced, 1.4% + 20p capped at £5.60 on Pro, with 0.3% above £2,000 outside the cap. International runs 2% to 2.4% + 20p, uncapped, and fees exclude VAT.
- Reviews: Trustpilot 2.5 out of 5 from 2,369 reviews against G2 4.6 from 321, plus Capterra 4.0 from 87 and the Xero App Store 3.45 from 198 (user-reported). Either of the first two would mislead you alone.
- Who it suits: you want bank debit, priced before you speak to anyone.
- Limitation: retries through Success+ and challenging a chargeback start on Advanced, so the plan quoting 1% + 20p leaves you without recovery tooling. On Standard your customer sees GoCardless on their statement.
4. London & Zurich
An independent UK direct debit bureau and facilities-management provider, FCA authorised under firm reference 712747.
What you get:
- A managed service obtaining a Service User Number for you through their sponsor bank
- A bureau service instead, if you hold your own SUN
- A shared SUN and phone support on Foundation, a branded SUN and API access on Business
The commercial detail:
- Pricing: nothing firm, only indicative tiers. Foundation is "Pricing around 1%", Business "from 0.5% or 20p", Enterprise "Banded pricing that reduces as you grow". That Business wording leaves you unsure whether the 20p replaces the percentage or adds to it.
- Reviews: none could be retrieved. Trustpilot returned an error on every mirror tried, and no G2 or Capterra listing was found.
- Who it suits: you're a one or two person business with no SUN, collecting amounts small enough that a percentage without a cap doesn't hurt.
- Limitation: no cap on any tier, so a £3,000 collection at "around 1%" costs you around £30 where a capped provider charges £4. Under the managed model your customers' money reaches their account first, then comes to you "as fast as possible".
5. Modulr
An FCA-authorised electronic money institution providing accounts and payments, collections alongside.
What you get:
- A "Flat per-collection rate", set against rivals whose costs "scale with transaction value"
- Your own Service User Number, so your company name appears on your customer's statement
- Collections settling over Faster Payments, with retries "on your terms" and Pay by Bank recovery
The commercial detail:
- Pricing: the published plans buy outbound payments. Bronze is £30 a month for 80 payments, Silver £110 for 500 and Platinum £500 for 3,000. Collection appears in no plan on either page, so the flat-rate idea carries no figure.
- Reviews: Trustpilot 4.5 out of 5 from 130 reviews (user-reported). G2 shows 5.0 from one review, which isn't a score.
- Who it suits: you hold your own SUN, or you'll get one, and a flat fee would land below a percentage of your invoice values.
- Limitation: collection is a sales conversation, and no accounting integration is named for that product.
6. PayPal
A card and wallet acquirer with an invoicing front end, and the brand your customers know.
What you get:
- Invoicing with "No monthly or setup fees. Only pay when you get paid."
- A checkout many of your customers already hold an account with
- QR code payments, plus Braintree as a separately priced gateway
The commercial detail:
- Pricing: 2.9% + 30p under "All Other Commercial Transactions", or 1.2% + 30p where the payer is card-funded and has no PayPal account. Cross-border adds 1.29% from the EEA and 1.99% elsewhere, and conversion is "3% above the base exchange rate". Last updated 15 July 2026.
- Reviews: no score is quoted, because none could be verified with a count and a date.
- Who it suits: you sell to consumers or overseas, and the brand earns its rate at your checkout.
- Limitation: you can't collect by Bacs direct debit through PayPal as a UK business. The UK fee page carries no direct debit row, and Braintree's support is SEPA, euro only, with the UK absent. PayPal uses "direct debit" for a consumer funding their own balance, a separate arrangement. Your reminders are capped at "up to 2 manual invoice reminders per invoice within a 24-hour period".
7. Stripe
A developer-first platform pricing cards, bank debit and invoicing as separate products.
What you get:
- Cards, Bacs direct debit, GBP bank transfers and Pay by Bank in one account
- Invoicing with a hosted invoice page, a customer portal and automatic collection
- No setup fees or monthly fees and, in Stripe's words, no "closure fees"
The commercial detail:
- Pricing: 1.5% + 20p on "Domestic cards", 2.8% + 20p premium, 2.5% + 20p on European Economic Area cards and 3.15% + 20p international, plus 2% on conversion. Bacs is 1% with a 20p minimum, capped at £4, with £4.00 per failed payment and £5.00 per disputed one. Invoicing adds 0.4% or 0.5% per paid invoice.
- Reviews: no score is quoted, for the same reason as PayPal.
- Who it suits: you have development capacity and consumer cards are most of your volume.
- Limitation: the products price separately, so an invoice paid by card carries both rates. Premium cards nearly double the standard rate, and a failed Bacs collection costs £4.00.
Where the headline rates stop lining up
Ranking these seven by headline rate would rank how each chose to express a price, so run the sums on your own numbers first.
A cap changes everything above the cap point. Adfin publishes £4 on the domestic Bacs fee, as do GoCardless and Stripe, where London & Zurich publishes none, so on £3,000 you're weighing £4 against around £30. Above £2,000 the uplifts differ too: 0.3% at GoCardless against 0.15% at Adfin, on the excess only.
Product names hide three card rates inside one provider. PayPal publishes 1.2% + 30p for Advanced Credit and Debit Card Payments on blended pricing, 3.4% + 30p for Website Payments Pro on the same card types, and 2.9% + 30p as its standard commercial rate. All three describe taking a card payment, and nothing tells you which product you're on.
How to choose
| Your situation | Start here | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You want a bank debit price you can read today | GoCardless | The only complete self-serve rate card in this set |
| You collect in euros or dollars | GoCardless or Stripe | Both publish international rates, and Adfin collects in sterling only |
| You want collection and chasing on one contract | Adfin | Direct debit, cards and credit control on one rate |
| You collect above £2,000 regularly | Adfin or GoCardless | Both cap at £4, and the uplift on the excess is 0.15% against 0.3% |
| Your collections fail often enough to matter | GoCardless | No published UK failure or chargeback fee, against £4.00 and £5.00 at Stripe |
| You sell to consumers or overseas | PayPal | The brand at the checkout, and invoicing at the ordinary transaction rate |
| You have developers and several payment methods | Stripe | The widest published product range, priced product by product |
| You have no SUN and want a person through setup | London & Zurich | They obtain the SUN through their sponsor bank |
| You collect thousands of small payments | Access PaySuite | Pence per collection can undercut a percentage at low values |
| You hold your own SUN and want flat fees | Modulr | Your name on the statement, though the price is a conversation |
How we compared these providers
Every figure came from the provider's own web page, and each one is listed in Sources so you can check it. Where a provider doesn't publish something we've said so instead of estimating, and where two of its pages disagree we've printed both. Providers are alphabetical, because no independent UK ranking exists and a numbered order would imply one.
Only PayPal's pages carry an effective date, so every other figure here, ours included, is a snapshot of a page giving no clue how old it is. GoCardless also claims direct debit is "Typically 48% cheaper than online card transactions", with no method behind it, so we've left that as their claim.
Review scores are third-party, quoted with the count and labelled user-reported. Where two platforms disagree we quote both, and where none could be verified with a count and a date we quote none.
Want collection, chasing and reconciliation on one rate? Book a demo or see Adfin pricing.
Common questions
Does PayPal charge extra for sending invoices? No. PayPal Invoicing has no setup fee and no monthly fee, and you pay the ordinary commercial rate, published as 2.9% + 30p. Stripe works the other way round, adding 0.4% or 0.5% per paid invoice on top of Payments pricing.
Can I collect direct debit through PayPal in the UK? Not as a business collecting from your customers. PayPal's UK fee page carries no direct debit row, and Braintree's support is SEPA, euro only, with the UK absent. PayPal does use "direct debit" for a consumer funding their own balance, which is a separate thing.
Which providers charge for a failed direct debit? Stripe publishes £4.00 per failed Bacs payment and £5.00 per disputed one. GoCardless states that failure and chargeback fees apply only in the US, in Germany and in Austria, so nothing applies to you here. The other five publish nothing, so ask in writing.
How much does it cost to take a £1,000 invoice payment? On a standard UK card through Stripe Invoicing, £15.20 of processing plus £4.00 of invoicing, so £19.20. Through PayPal Invoicing, £29.30. By Bacs direct debit at 1% + 20p capped at £4, £4.00, plus £4.00 again on Stripe. Our arithmetic on published rates, VAT excluded.
Do these providers say whether their fees include VAT? Two of them address it. GoCardless charges VAT on transaction fees invoiced to UK merchants, so 1% + 20p reads as 1.2% + 24p if you can't recover it. Stripe's UK pricing page states nothing, and its global tax page excludes VAT for account holders outside a list omitting the UK. Nobody else says either way, Adfin included.
How old are these published prices? PayPal's UK fee page says "Last Updated: 15 July 2026" and its Braintree page 29 June 2026. No other page here carries a date, including Stripe's three and ours, so check before you commit.
Sources
- Access PaySuite — direct debit pricing (accurate as of August 2026)
- GoCardless — pricing (accurate as of August 2026)
- GoCardless — pricing and fees (accurate as of August 2026)
- London & Zurich — pricing (accurate as of August 2026)
- Modulr — pricing for business (accurate as of August 2026)
- PayPal — business fees, UK (accurate as of August 2026)
- PayPal — what PayPal Invoicing costs (accurate as of August 2026)
- PayPal Developer — Braintree SEPA Direct Debit overview (accurate as of August 2026)
- Stripe — invoicing pricing (accurate as of August 2026)
- Stripe — local payment method pricing (accurate as of August 2026)
- Stripe — pricing (accurate as of August 2026)
- Stripe — global taxation of Stripe fees (accurate as of August 2026)
- Stripe — standard and premium cards (accurate as of August 2026)
Adfin is one of the providers compared in this article, and Adfin publishes it. All pricing is each provider's own published pricing; only PayPal's pages carry an effective date and providers change their prices, so check before you commit. The per-invoice figures are our arithmetic on published rates, VAT excluded, rather than quoted prices. Review scores are third-party, quoted with their counts. Last updated August 2026.
