The mobile card readers we’ve looked at so far are great for small retailers (say, less than £1,000 in monthly card payments) or sole traders looking to take payments on the go. However, larger merchants accepting a higher volume of transactions are going to get a better deal by taking the PDQ machine route.
With SmartTrade you don’t even need a card reader; you simply download the mobile app and turn your smartphone into a portable payment machine. The app is available for iOS and Android and you can also accept payments on PC and Mac using the SmartTrade App. You get three methods of accepting payments: face-to-face, over the phone and email paylinks – all of which are secured by SmartTrade’s military-grade encryption technology.
Visa, Mastercard and Amex are supported, as well as all major foreign credit cards, although extra charges apply for non-EU cards (see payment details below). Payments take five business days to clear and this is reduced to three days if you turn over more than £30k per month.
While you don’t pay for a card reader with SmartTrade, you do pay a monthly fee to use the service and prices are broken down into three account types.
For non-EU cards, you’ll also have to pay an additional 1.5% surcharge on top of the regular fees.
Verdict:
SmartTrade makes accepting card payments incredibly easy and not having to worry about separate card readers is great. Business and Enterprise account holders can have multiple users accepting payment via their own smartphones but you have to pay for this convenience with monthly fees. Only you can decide whether these fees are worth it.