NetPay Review: Payment Services For Businesses Of Every Size

Things we like:

Extensive payment services
Competitive pricing
Fairly transparent pricing
Flexible rental options

Things we don’t like:

Minimum monthly charge
36-month contracts

NetPay Overview

NetPay is an award-winning payment processing company in the UK, offering an extensive range of payment services for businesses of every size. The company’s competitive pricing and flexible service options make NetPay a contender for all but the smallest of businesses with very low volumes/values of monthly card transactions.

In this review, we’re going to take a closer look at what NetPay has to offer your business and help you decide if this is the payment service provider for you.

NetPay Products & Services

With NetPay you can accept card payments face-to-face, online, over the phone and by mail. The company also offers a dedicated service for accepting in-app payments and its Revolution reporting system provides you with detailed insights into your payment processing and business performance.

Face-to-face payments

NetPay offers three different types of card readers for accepting face-to-face payments:

Wired: Accept card payments over the counter for the fastest payment processing and receipt printing from a fixed location.
Wireless: Accept payments roughly 50m from your base terminal – ideal for restaurants, pubs, cafes and other businesses where you to take the card reader to your customers.
Mobile: Take payments anywhere in the UK with a mobile connection.

All of the card readers come with contactless and NFC payment capabilities as standard and you can find out more about the card readers provided by NetPay here.

Online payments

With NetPay’s online payments services, you can accept card payments on your website. You get a simple payment gateway page support for all major credit and debit cards and UK-based 24/7 customer support on hand, in case you run into any technical issues.

Mail order, telephone order

If you need to accept payments over the phone, NetPay also offers a virtual terminal which allows you to key in your customers’ card details to take the payment. Each member of your staff gets their own login (or the staff members you choose) and all they need to do is type their details in and then take your customer’s details to process the payment.

NetPay Fees

NetPay is highly competitive with its fees and far more transparent than most payment service providers. That said, the fees listed below are the best rates available and the fees you end up paying may vary, depending on various factors – such as the size of your business, sales volume, etc.

Here’s a summary of the minimum fees you can expect to pay:

Card processing fees:

Consumer and Business Debit cards: from 0.39% + 2.5p
Consumer Credit Cards: from 0.69% + 2.5p
Business/Corporate Credit Cards: from 2% + 2.5p

Terminal Fees:

Corded Terminal: from £8.99 (+VAT) / month
Wireless Terminal: from £14.99 (+VAT) / month
GPRS Terminal: from £16.99 (+VAT) / month
No Setup Fee on Terminals

Online/eCommerce Fees

From £9.99 (+VAT) per month
Online Setup one-time £29.99

Other Fees:

Monthly Minimum Service Charge: £15 / month
PCI Fees: £4.99 / month (with 6 free months)
Paper Statement Fees: £4 / month – – option of free for online
Chargeback Fee (merchant chargeback): £15
Refunds: free

That places NetPay among the most competitive payment service companies in the UK. The only exception will be if you process a very small number of card payments per month and the minimum £15 monthly charge becomes a problem – but this will only be an issue for the vast minority of small businesses in the UK.

NetPay Contracts & Early Termination Fees

NetPay requires you to sign up to 36-month contracts and we think asking merchants to commit to three years is far too long. Sadly, this is quite common among traditional payment firms but make sure you know what you’re getting into before signing anything.

There are also early termination fees involved but these can vary depending on which merchant account provider NetPay signs you up with. In some cases, your early termination fee will be a fixed amount (eg: £250 via Lloyds Bank) or your minimum monthly fees combined and then multiplied by the number of remaining months on your contract (ouch).

Read your contract before signing anything.

You can find out more about cancellations from this NetPay guide.

NetPay Sales & Transparency

NetPay is fairly transparent and its sales team isn’t as aggressive as many. However, if you’re using NetPay to set you up with an acquiring bank, things are more complex. The specific terms of your contract are going to depend on who your merchant account provider is and this brings a lot of variables into the equation.

Because of this, there’s a limit to how much reliable information NetPay sales reps can give you until your merchant account provider is confirmed.

In fairness, NetPay tries to provide information on important details like fees (as you can see from the document we linked to above) but there are complaints from some customers about transparency, promises not being fulfilled and certain charges being higher than expected.

NetPay Customer Service & Technical Support

With NetPay, you’ve got limited options when it comes to customer service and technical support. You can either call the support team directly or email the relevant department using the form on NetPay’s contact page. There’s no online support centre, no live chat or even so much as an FAQ section for basic user problems.

While it doesn’t have the most sophisticated customer service system, NetPay does appear to respond to all customer concerns. Online reviews are mixed but mixed is better than most in this business and we can’t ignore that fact that people are probably more likely to leave feedback when something goes wrong.

Payzone Reviews & Reputation

The biggest problem with NetPay’s online reputation is that there isn’t much of one. You can find a grand total of five reviews on Trustpilot and nine on Facebook, which is just about all you’ve got to work with. As we say, the general consensus is rather mixed but this doesn’t tell us much with such a low volume of reviews to analyse.

All we can say is that the few complaints we’ve got to work with mostly mention sales reps and contract issues – so, please, read before you sign anything.

NetPay Verdict: 3.5/5

If you need a company to set you up with a merchant account provider and deliver the hardware/software to accept payments in-store and online, then NetPay is definitely worth looking at. You’ll get cheaper rates compared to going directly to acquiring banks and your chances of being accepted are significantly higher – plus you can basically get all of the payment services you need from one place.

For retail and service business that processes a lot of face-to-face card payments, this could be all that’s needed. However, smaller retailers and more online-orientated businesses may get more affordable rates for low volumes or more up-to-date online payment features elsewhere.