Card machine rental sounds cheap at £15 to £25 a month, until you notice a SumUp or Square reader costs £19 to own outright. On hardware alone, rental loses within weeks. But the honest answer is messier: rented terminals often come bundled with negotiated rates that can beat flat-rate pricing at higher volumes. This guide runs the full-term maths on renting versus buying a card machine, so you can decide on numbers rather than a salesperson's patter.
Card machine rental vs buying: the short answer
If you only compare hardware costs, buying wins almost immediately. A £19 SumUp or Square reader pays for itself against a £20-a-month rental in one month flat. Even a £150 full-size countertop terminal beats that rental inside eight months, and terminals routinely last five years or more.
But hardware is the small number. A business taking £10,000 a month in card payments pays £2,028 a year in fees at 1.69%, so a rate difference of 0.3 percentage points dwarfs any rental charge. That is why the real question is never rent or buy in isolation; it is which total package costs least over the full contract term.
Rule of thumb: below roughly £5,000 a month in card turnover, buy a flat-rate reader and be done. Above that, a rental-plus-negotiated-rate deal can win, but only if you make them show you the full-term figure in writing.
What rental actually costs over a contract
A typical rental runs £15 to £25 a month, usually on an 18-month minimum term. Take £20 a month over 18 months and you have paid £360 for a terminal you could have bought for £19 to £150, and at the end of the term you still own nothing. Renew for another 18 months and you are at £720.
Add the extras that cling to rental contracts: PCI compliance fees, minimum monthly service charges, paper roll charges, and sometimes a separate gateway fee. Our guide to hidden card machine fees lists the usual suspects. Individually they are a few pounds; together they can double the headline rental cost.
None of this makes rental automatically wrong. It makes rental a cost that must be justified by something else in the deal, and that something is almost always the processing rate.
Why rental still exists (and sometimes deserves to)
Rental persists because acquirers like Dojo, Worldpay and Tyl bundle it with individually negotiated processing rates, and for higher-volume businesses those rates can undercut the 1.69% to 1.75% flat rates by a wide margin. The rental is the visible cost; the rate saving is the invisible benefit. Both are real.
Rental also buys service. If a rented terminal dies on a Saturday, a decent provider ships a replacement fast or supports you by phone, because the terminal is their property and your downtime is their churn risk. If your owned £19 reader dies, you buy another one, which is cheap but not instant.
Who should rent: businesses over roughly £5,000 a month in card turnover that have negotiated a genuinely low rate and read the exit terms. Who should walk away: anyone offered rental with a rate no better than the flat-rate providers, because then you are paying £360 extra for nothing.
The lease trap: the pattern that ruins people
The classic horror story is the separate terminal lease. A salesperson, historically prowling markets and small shops, signs you to a long lease for the hardware, sometimes four or five years, sold separately from your processing contract. The lease is often with a finance company, not the acquirer, so cancelling your card processing does not cancel the lease.
Do the maths on a £25-a-month lease over 48 months: £1,200 for hardware worth perhaps £300 new, and the contract may be enforceable even if your business closes. It is the payments industry's answer to the gym membership, except the gym at least lets you visit.
Protect yourself with one question: is the terminal agreement a separate contract from the processing agreement? If yes, and it runs longer than 18 months, walk away. Check current terms carefully, and if you have already been caught, get the paperwork in front of a professional before assuming you are stuck.
Worked examples: the full-term numbers
Example one, a stallholder taking £2,000 a month by card. Flat-rate: £19 reader plus 1.69% is £33.80 a month, £626.60 in year one. Rental deal at 1.4% plus £20 a month: £28 in fees plus £20 rental is £48 a month, £576 a year, plus setup and PCI fees. Buying wins comfortably, and there is no contract to escape.
Example two, a cafe taking £12,000 a month. Flat-rate at 1.69% is £202.80 a month, £2,433.60 a year. Rental at 1.4% plus £20 is £168 plus £20, £188 a month, £2,256 a year. The rental package wins by roughly £178 a year, provided the quoted rate holds across your card mix and the extras stay small.
The crossover sits around £5,000 to £7,000 a month depending on the exact rates quoted. Do not trust our example rates for your decision: quote-based providers price individually, so put your own numbers into our fee calculator and demand a full-term written quote before signing anything.
A decision framework by volume
Here is the honest version of the decision, stripped of sales gloss.
Whichever side you land on, re-run the numbers once a year. Volumes change, and a deal that was right at £3,000 a month is often wrong at £10,000. You can compare card machines side by side when you do.
- Under £2,000 a month: buy a £19 reader with no monthly fee. Rental cannot be justified at this volume, full stop.
- £2,000 to £5,000 a month: buying still usually wins, but get one rental quote as a benchmark. Refuse anything longer than 18 months.
- £5,000 to £15,000 a month: genuine contest. Get quotes from two acquirers via our quote service, compare full-term totals against flat-rate, and negotiate.
- Over £15,000 a month: negotiated rates almost certainly win, so the question becomes which acquirer, not whether to rent.
- Any volume: never sign a hardware lease that is separate from the processing contract.
The bottom line
Buying wins on hardware maths in almost every case, and for small and seasonal traders it is barely a contest: £19 once beats £360 per term forever. The only thing that rescues rental is a genuinely lower processing rate, which is real money at higher volumes but must be proven, in writing, over the full term.
So do not ask whether to rent or buy. Ask what the total cost of each package is over 18 months at your volume, and check current terms on exit fees before you commit. The provider that answers that question clearly and quickly is usually the one to pick.
FAQs
Is it better to rent or buy a card machine?
For most small businesses, buying wins: a £19 reader beats a £20-a-month rental within one month, and even a £150 terminal wins inside eight. Rental only makes sense when it is bundled with a negotiated processing rate that saves more than the rental costs, which usually needs £5,000-plus of monthly card turnover.
How much does card machine rental cost in the UK?
Typically £15 to £25 a month on an 18-month minimum term, so £270 to £450 per term before extras like PCI compliance and minimum monthly service charges. The processing rate attached to the deal matters far more than the rental figure itself.
What is the card machine lease trap?
It is a long hardware lease, often four or five years, sold separately from your processing contract and usually held by a finance company. Cancelling your card processing does not cancel the lease, so you can end up paying £1,000-plus for a terminal worth a few hundred. Never sign hardware and processing as separate agreements.
When does renting a card machine make sense?
When your card turnover is high enough that a negotiated rate saves more than the rental and extras cost, typically above £5,000 a month. Insist on a full-term written quote, an 18-month maximum term, and check current terms on exit fees before signing.
