The card machine is free. The question worth asking is what that word is covering.
Free hardware is a genuine saving. It is also the easiest part of a payments contract to give away, because the terminal was never where the money was. So the useful question is not whether the machine is free. It is what sits behind it, and what you are agreeing to when you take it.
Renting the terminal is the older model, and it is priced as a fixed monthly line. Merchant Savvy's card processing fees guide, last updated 6 October 2025, puts terminal rental at £14 to £35 a month per device.
Run that out over a year, using the ends of that published range rather than a guess in the middle.
That is the line a free machine removes, and it is worth having. What it does not touch is the percentage, which is where the volume is, and the other fixed charges that sit alongside it. The same guide prices the PCI compliance fee at £5 to £20 a month and the authorisation fee at 0p to 4.5p per transaction, with Worldpay and Barclaycard at the top of that range. We went through the whole stack in the first piece in this series.
This is the part almost nobody is told, and it is the most useful thing in this article.
When the Payment Systems Regulator finished its market review into card acquiring, it found that terminal contracts were themselves a barrier to getting a better deal. Its final report states that terminals and terminal contracts can prevent or discourage merchants from searching and switching, because a merchant changing provider could face a significant early termination fee on the terminal contract it is already in.
So the regulator acted. Specific Direction 16 prohibits an initial term longer than 18 months on a point of sale terminal contract. After that initial term the contract can only run on a maximum one month recurring term, with one month's notice on the merchant's side. It applies to merchants with annual card turnover up to £10,000,000. It was made on 6 October 2022 and came into force on 6 January 2023.
Two things to be straight about. That direction binds a named list of payment service providers rather than every company selling a terminal, so it is worth checking whether the one in front of you is on it. And it is a statement about the regulated market, not about any contract of ours.
The point stands either way. If your current terminal agreement has years left to run and an exit fee attached, that is the shape of a contract the regulator looked at and decided to limit.
The same set of remedies put three other things in place. Directed providers must give each business a summary box setting out the key price and non price information for its own account. They must show it prominently in the online account. And they must send periodic trigger messages prompting the business to shop around or switch. Those obligations took effect in July 2023.
Both are easy to miss. If your provider is a directed firm, your summary box is the single fastest way to see what you are on, because it is your own numbers rather than a brochure.
Worth being blunt about the limits.
It does not lower your rate. A free machine on a poor percentage is the more expensive deal, because the percentage applies to everything you take and a rental line does not.
It does not remove the other fixed lines. A PCI compliance fee, where one is charged, carries on regardless of what the hardware cost. We looked at what that fee actually buys in a separate piece.
It does not answer the per transaction question. An authorisation fee is charged on the count of transactions, not on turnover, so it lands hardest on venues taking a lot of small payments.
And free hardware is not the same as no obligation. Free at the point of signing tells you what you pay at the start. It does not tell you what leaving looks like, and that is a separate question you have to ask directly.
Get all five in an email. A provider quoting honestly will answer in writing without being chased.
Our card machine is free. There is no terminal rental and no subscription on the terminal, because there is nothing to rent. Hardware and setup cost nothing and there is nothing to pay upfront. We charge no PCI compliance fee.
We do charge an authorisation fee. It is priced per contract rather than published, and there are other contract terms that are not on this website. In an article about what the word free is covering, it would be poor form to leave one of our own charges out of it.
What we commit to is that your rate and every fee attached to it are quoted in writing before you agree to anything, and that every product and module price we charge is published in full.
Yes. Several providers now supply the terminal at no cost rather than renting it, and the published market range for rental, £14 to £35 a month per device, is the line that removes. The cost of accepting cards moves to the processing rate and to any per transaction fees, so a free machine is worth having and is not on its own a reason to choose a provider.
The hardware is. What you should check is the rest of the agreement: the term, the cost of leaving early, whether a PCI fee applies, and whether an authorisation fee is charged per transaction. Free describes the machine, not the contract around it.
If it is rented, published UK figures put it at £14 to £35 a month per device. If it is supplied free there is no rental line at all, and your monthly cost is the processing rate applied to your takings plus whatever fixed fees your contract carries. Add every line together and divide by your card turnover to get the number that actually compares.
Which is the whole point of reading the contract rather than the headline. Put your own figures through the savings calculator and see what the fixed lines are costing you before the percentage is even applied.
Send three months of card statements and one busy Friday. We will show you what your card processing is costing you now against what it would cost with us, with every fee named, before you commit to anything.
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