Why growing businesses are switching to Payments Plus
As your business grows, so do your needs. The tools that once worked for you might start to fall short — or cost more than they should.
Whether you're hiring your first team member, opening a second location or just handling more day-to-day tasks, the right tools can make all the difference.
Let's take a look at one of SumUp's best tools for growing businesses: Payments Plus.
Help! I'm paying too much in fees!
This is something that many growing business owners begin to worry about. You originally decided to start a small business, and you chose the right tools and products based on that. However, as your business gets bigger, they're not the right tools anymore. In fact, they may be costing you a lot of money.
Growing businesses often need to upgrade their systems to find something that works for their larger size and higher turnover. If you've been using SumUp to take payments, it may be time to wave goodbye to our pay-as-you-go plan and move on to Payments Plus.
What is Payments Plus?
If you’re familiar with SumUp, you may already be familiar with our basic pay-as-you-go scheme. Using this programme, you pay a small transaction fee of between 1.69% and 2.5% on every payment you take with a SumUp product. There are no monthly fees, no contracts, and no ongoing commitments. That's great when you've got a very small business, but let's be clear, it's a product designed for very small businesses. The more money you take per month, the more inefficient you'll find pay-as-you-go to be.
That means it may be time to level up to Payments Plus.
The first big difference here is that you'll pay a monthly or yearly fee. Payments Plus costs £19 a month if you want to sign up on a rolling monthly basis, and you can opt out and cancel your plan at any time if you're not sure whether it's right for you. Alternatively, when you're ready to commit to the new package, you can save 17% by committing for a year, which will cost £189.
In exchange for this plan fee, you'll find a number of benefits to help your growing business. First and foremost, there are reduced fees on each transaction. You'll also get 50% off a SumUp card reader for your business, and if you've got a problem with your card reader and you need a replacement, we'll do that for free. That's even the case if your current card reader is out of warranty.
Finally, Payments Plus gives you priority access to customer service. Yes, all SumUp customers have free customer support, but if you've signed up to Payments Plus, you'll jump right to the front of the queue, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All of these benefits can really make a huge difference to a business that's ready to move on from the basic pay-as-you-go package.
Payments Plus is integrated into the SumUp ecosystem. That means that if you're already using SumUp card readers, Point of Sale, online services, and other tools, you'll find that they all work together without any extra effort or tech know-how on your part.
How Payments Plus can save you money
Changing to Payments Plus is something to think about carefully. Before you make a decision, you'll need to consider exactly how much you're spending on pay-as-you-go and how much you will spend if you make the switch. In general, using Payments Plus can save you up to 60% in fees, depending on the types of cards your customers use and whether they're paying online or in-store. Here's a quick breakdown of how the two programmes compare:
Payment Type | Pay-as-you-go | Payments Plus |
In-person payments (domestic consumer cards) | 1.69% | 0.99% |
Online payments (domestic consumer cards) | 2.5% | 0.99% |
International, corporate and premium cards (including AMEX) | 1.69% for in-person paymenrs and 2.5% for online payments | 1.99% |
Card reader | Full price | 50% discount |
Now, what does that mean in practice? Let's imagine you're running a coffee shop. You only take in-store payments, and most customers use domestic cards. You take £5,000 a month. Here's how that breaks down under the different programmes:
Under pay-as-you-go, you'll pay 1.69% in fees. That works out to £84.50 a month.
Payments Plus drops that to 0.99% in fees, or £49.50.
If you're paying for Payments Plus on a monthly basis, you'll have a £19 monthly fee. Add that to your fees and you'll be paying £68.50 a month, a saving of £15.50 per month.
How does that look over a year? For the sake of simplicity, let's keep assuming you're taking £5,000 a month over a 12-month period.
Under pay-as-you-go, you'll pay £1,014 in fees over the year.
With Payments Plus, that amount drops to £594.
If you upgrade on a rolling monthly basis, you'll pay £228 in fees for the year: a total of £822, or a saving of £192.
However, if you pay for a year of Payments Plus, you'll get a 17% discount. Your plan costs £189 for the year, so in total, you'll pay £783. That gives you a saving of £231 in comparison to pay-as-you-go.
By the way, this example is just using in-person payments. If your business has an online shop, the savings will be bigger. £5,000 in online payments means fees of £125. That drops to £49.50 with Payments Plus.
The more money your business takes in payments, the more you can save by switching to Payments Plus. On the other hand, it doesn't make sense to change if you're not taking that much money.
As a general rule, the break-even point for Payments Plus is £3,300 per month. If your business takes less than this, stick with pay-as-you-go for now.
Extra perks with Payments Plus
There's more to Payments Plus than the obvious savings. Upgrading comes with some benefits that can really help your business. Priority access to customer support is a major reason to consider making the switch. Any time you need business help, you'll be sent right to the front of the queue.
Payments Plus members also get 50% off a SumUp card reader. That's really handy if you're planning to grow your business and you need an extra reader to handle more customers at the same time. If you're already using other SumUp products like Terminal, Tap to Pay, POS, or our online tools, you'll find that Payments Plus integrates easily with them.
Finally, as a Payments Plus member, you can replace your card reader for free if you find some kind of problem or malfunction, even if it's out of warranty.
Who it's for
Payments Plus isn't for everyone. If your business is taking less than £3,300 from customers each month, we don't recommend switching to Payments Plus. You should probably also think about the nature of your business and how your turnover looks over the entire year. Highly seasonal businesses, with major spikes in volume a couple of times a year, may not benefit from Payments Plus. You might take £6,000 in the Christmas rush of December, but if you're taking £2,000 the other eleven months of the year, this programme probably won't work for you. There's nothing wrong with that. Pay-as-you-go is still at the heart of the SumUp suite of tools, and that's not going to change.
On the other hand, Payments Plus is a good solution if you're consistently taking over £3,300 a month. Businesses with steady payment volume over the year will benefit from the reduced fees.
Payments Plus is also a good choice if you're eager to get better access to customer support. That's often a particular priority for growing businesses. Of course, all SumUp users have customer support, and that won't change, but Payments Plus members enjoy priority services.
Finally, Payments Plus is suitable for business owners who want to expand and reduce fees without changing to a completely different system. Perhaps you've already spent a long time getting familiar with SumUp payment tools, and you're happy with them. Payments Plus lets you keep the familiar products while benefiting from lower fees.
We recommend taking the time to think about how Payments Plus could help your business. Remember, this is a low-commitment programme: if you sign up on a monthly basis, you can cancel at any time and return to pay-as-you-go.
Are you ready for Payments Plus?
Think Payments Plus is right for your business? Visit the Payments Plus product page to learn more about the system and how it can work for you. When you're ready to upgrade, just open up your SumUp Dashboard and activate the Payments Plus option. It's as simple as that!
