Best Payment Processors for Small Business in 2026

Square is the merchant business of Block, Inc. It began in 2009 with a card reader that plugged into a phone, and its parent changed its name from Square, Inc. to Block in 2021. Square combines processing with a free POS app, online store, invoicing, appointments and business banking. In the third quarter of 2026 Square processed US$76.4 billion of gross payment volume, 14% more than a year earlier, the fastest growth since early 2023.

Square publishes its complete US rate card. On the free plan in-person payments cost 2.6% + 15¢, online and invoice payments 3.3% + 30¢, payments made through its developer API 2.9% + 30¢, and keyed-in or card-on-file payments 3.5% + 15¢. Paid Plus and Premium plans reduce the in-person rate to 2.5% + 15¢ and 2.4% + 15¢ and lower the invoice rate to 2.9% + 30¢. ACH bank transfers cost 1% with a $1 minimum, and in-person bitcoin payments carry no fee until 2027. The main limitation is the online invoice rate on the free plan, which is higher than most competitors' online rates.

Stripe is a payments infrastructure company with dual headquarters in San Francisco and Dublin, led by co-founders Patrick Collison (CEO) and John Collison (President). Businesses on Stripe generated US$1.9 trillion in 2025, according to the company's annual letter. Stripe is best known for online card acceptance through APIs and hosted checkout pages, and it adds billing, invoicing, fraud screening (Radar) and in-person payments through Stripe Terminal readers.

Standard US pricing has no setup or monthly fee. Domestic online card payments cost 2.9% + 30¢; international cards add 1.5% and currency conversion adds 1%. In-person payments through Terminal cost 2.7% + 5¢, and Tap to Pay adds 10¢ per authorisation. ACH Direct Debit costs 0.8%, capped at $5. A dispute costs $15, and contesting it costs another $15, refunded if the merchant wins. The trade-off is set-up effort: Stripe's flexibility assumes a developer or a platform integration, and add-ons such as Billing (0.7% of billing volume on pay-as-you-go) increase the effective rate.

Helcim is a payment processor that sells interchange-plus pricing to small businesses. Instead of a flat percentage, merchants pay the card network's interchange cost plus a fixed Helcim margin, and the margin falls automatically as monthly volume rises. Helcim's own pricing pages blocked automated access during research for this article, so the figures below come from NerdWallet's review, updated 5 March 2026.

At up to $50,000 a month in card volume, in-person transactions cost interchange + 0.40% + 8¢ and online or keyed transactions interchange + 0.50% + 25¢. Between $50,000 and $100,000 the margins drop to 0.35% + 7¢ in person and 0.45% + 20¢ online, with further reductions above that. ACH payments cost 0.5% + 25¢, capped at $6 for transactions under $25,000. There is no monthly fee. A card reader costs $199 and a smart terminal with a printer $349. NerdWallet notes that deposits take up to two business days, that interchange-plus costs are harder to predict, and that Helcim lacks a full countertop POS for restaurants.

Clover is the point-of-sale and payments platform owned by Fiserv. The figures here are those NerdWallet reports when Fiserv itself is the processor, from a review updated on 20 May 2026.

In-person rates are 2.3% + 10¢ on most restaurant plans and the Standard and Advanced retail and personal-service plans, 2.5% + 10¢ on Home and Field Services Standard, and 2.6% + 10¢ on the Basic plans. Online and keyed transactions cost 3.5% + 10¢. Monthly software fees run from $0 for Clover Go Starter and the Basic plans to $84.95 for Retail Standard and $129.85 for Full-Service Dining Advanced. POS software is month-to-month, but NerdWallet reports that payment processing may require a long-term contract and that hardware promotions require three years. Clover's hardware range, from the Clover Go reader to countertop Station terminals, is its main attraction for businesses that want a dedicated till rather than a tablet app.

Shopify Payments is Shopify's integrated card processor. It is enabled from the Shopify admin, accepts cards, wallets and instalment payments, and lets merchants accept payments in more than 130 currencies. It is available to businesses located in 41 countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, most of the European Union, Australia, Japan and Singapore.

Its main economic effect is on Shopify's third-party gateway fee. Merchants who use another processor pay Shopify an extra percentage of each sale: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus, according to the pricing page consulted for this article; that fee is waived when Shopify Payments is used. The pricing page served for this review showed euro plan prices (Basic €27, Grow €74 and Advanced €384 per month billed monthly, or €19, €56 and €289 billed yearly) and did not display card rates, which vary by plan and country. The limitation is lock-in: Shopify Payments is only available to Shopify merchants, and businesses outside the 41 supported countries must use a third-party provider.

QuickBooks Payments is Intuit's card and bank-payment service for QuickBooks users. Payments taken through QuickBooks invoices are recorded and reconciled automatically in the accounting ledger, which is the main reason businesses choose it over a standalone processor.

Intuit's rate page, dated 18 September 2026, lists 2.99% for cards and digital wallets, 1% for ACH bank payments, 2.5% for in-person payments, 3.5% for keyed-in cards and 1.75% for instant deposits. Payment dispute protection starts at 0.99%. Businesses processing more than $2,500 a month may qualify for up to 25% off transaction costs, and Intuit states that the published rates apply regardless of card network or corporate-card use. Its comparison table positions these rates against Square's; readers should note that this comparison is Intuit's own. QuickBooks Payments is less suited to retail counters, and it requires a QuickBooks subscription.

SumUp sells card readers and simple POS software to small merchants, including in the United States. Its US model is a flat rate with no monthly fee on the free tier and a one-time hardware purchase.

SumUp's US pricing page lists 2.6% + 10¢ for in-person card payments and 3.5% + 15¢ for online and manually entered transactions. The free tier costs $0 per month; POS Plus costs $49 per month and the full SumUp POS starts at $99 per month. Reader prices were not listed on the pricing page consulted. The higher online rate means SumUp is mainly a choice for businesses whose sales are overwhelmingly in person; for online-heavy businesses Stripe's 2.9% + 30¢ or Square's API rate is usually cheaper on typical order values.

Chase Payment Solutions is JPMorgan Chase's merchant-processing service for small businesses. It offers the Chase POS app, card readers, countertop terminals, Tap to Pay on phones, a payment gateway, invoicing and a virtual terminal, and it integrates with third-party systems including TouchBistro, NCR Voyix and Authorize.net.

Published rates are 2.6% + 10¢ for tapped, dipped or swiped payments, 3.5% + 15¢ for keyed transactions and payment links, and 2.9% + 25¢ for online orders. The main differentiator is funding: businesses with a Chase Business Complete Banking account can receive deposits as soon as the same day at no extra cost, and those processing more than $2,000 a month in card payments can have that account's monthly service fee waived. Outside that banking relationship the offer is broadly comparable to flat-rate rivals, and Chase's page directs prospective merchants to a payments advisor rather than self-service sign-up.

Stax sells payment processing on a subscription basis: merchants pay a monthly fee and then interchange plus a small fixed per-transaction fee, without a percentage markup. Stax's own site blocked automated access during research, so figures come from NerdWallet's review, last updated 7 August 2026. NerdWallet also identifies Stax as the owner of Payment Depot.

The subscription is $99 per month for businesses processing under $150,000 a year, $139 per month between $150,000 and $250,000, and $199 per month or more above that. Per-transaction markups are 8¢ in person and 15¢ for keyed and online payments, plus interchange; ACH costs 1% capped at $10. A $10 monthly PCI compliance fee also applies. NerdWallet's reviewer considers Stax poor value below roughly $10,000 a month in card sales, notes that dedicated merchant accounts require a longer application, and recommends obtaining fee details in writing.

Payment Depot is a US payment processor owned by Stax. It was long known for membership plans that charged a monthly fee in exchange for wholesale interchange; NerdWallet's review updated 12 January 2026 describes a different current model: interchange plus a markup of 0.2% to 1.95%, with no monthly subscription. Payment Depot's own pricing page blocked automated access during research.

NerdWallet reports a $10 monthly PCI compliance fee, no long-term contracts or termination fees, and one-time hardware costs from $125 for a SwipeSimple B350 reader to $2,195 for a Clover Station Duo. Support runs on weekdays, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern. The reviewer notes that accounting sync may require a paid third-party app and that some e-commerce integrations are indirect. Because the markup range is wide and set per business, the effective rate can only be compared after receiving a quote.

Toast is a restaurant technology company that bundles POS software, handheld and countertop hardware, payments, online ordering, payroll and lending. At the end of the third quarter of 2026 it served about 189,000 locations, up 21% year on year, and processed US$61.8 billion of gross payment volume in the quarter; revenue was US$1.98 billion.

Toast's pricing site blocked automated access, so figures come from NerdWallet's review updated 6 August 2026. The Starter Kit plan is $0 per month and the Point of Sale plan $69 per month and up; custom plans are quote-based. When hardware is bought upfront, card-present payments cost 2.49% + 15¢ and card-not-present 3.50% + 15¢; pay-as-you-go plans that subsidise hardware cost 3.09% to 3.69% + 15¢. A Toast Tap reader costs $149 and a Toast Go 3 handheld $599; on-site installation costs $1,000 per day. Contracts typically run two to three years, and NerdWallet notes that several add-ons, including online ordering and accounting integration, are quoted separately.

PayPal Holdings operates PayPal Checkout, Venmo, Braintree and in-person card acceptance. In the third quarter of 2026 it reported total payment volume of US$487.1 billion, up 6%, revenue of US$8.58 billion and 440 million active accounts. For small merchants the main appeal is the PayPal and Venmo buttons, which let customers pay with stored wallet balances or cards without re-entering details.

PayPal's US merchant-fee pages returned access errors during research for this article, so current rates are not quoted here; PayPal publishes a fee schedule that varies by product (PayPal Checkout, card processing, Venmo, QR code and in-person payments) and charges different rates for international transactions. Merchants comparing PayPal with flat-rate processors should check the live schedule, because PayPal's wallet-based checkout rates have historically differed from its card-processing rates. PayPal suits businesses for which wallet conversion matters more than the lowest card rate.