GoPay Review

GoPay is an online payment gateway for e-shops in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, based in České Budějovice. Worldline bought a 53% stake in 2020 and, according to the Czech company register, became sole owner in October 2022. Since 1 April 2025 GoPay has operated as GoPay Czech, the Czech branch of Worldline NV of Belgium, and is licensed by the National Bank of Belgium as a payment institution. As of October 2026 its pricing page offers two plans for new merchants. Both charge a flat 0.95% per card, bank-transfer or QR payment with no fixed fee, after a free introductory period. The Growth plan also has a CZK 80 monthly fee in any month with CZK 50,000 or less in volume. Settlement to your bank costs CZK 10, a chargeback CZK 990 and a refund CZK 5. Your plan price is written into your registration form, and GoPay's terms say an individual agreement overrides its general fee schedule. That schedule, in a version effective 1 November 2026, lists much higher default card fees of about 2.15% to 2.30% + CZK 3 and applies to anything your form does not set. GoPay offers more than 50 payment methods, including Czech bank buttons, QR payments, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal and pay-later options. It says 19,823 merchants use it and that it handled CZK 98.7 billion in 2024. There is no fixed contract term and no cancellation fee. However, the terms let GoPay set reserves at its own discretion and end the contract within three months of signing without giving a reason. Its Trustpilot rating is poor, though from only 26 reviews.

Estimated annual cost at three realistic processing volumes, using GoPay’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.

What GoPay is

GoPay is an online payment gateway for e-shops in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It is run from České Budějovice in South Bohemia, and its site also has Polish and Hungarian versions. It began as an electronic wallet. According to its own timeline it got its first Czech National Bank licence, as a small-scale payment services provider, in 2007, launched the wallet in 2008 and launched the payment gateway in 2010. It became an electronic money institution in 2012 and gained a PSD2 licence in 2019. Founder Pavel Schwarz was its managing director (jednatel) from 2007 until the Worldline deal in September 2020. The legal entity is older than the brand: the company register shows GOPAY s.r.o. (ID 26046768) incorporated in April 2002 as CNN spol. s r.o. and renamed GOPAY s.r.o. in March 2011. We use 2007, the start of the regulated business, as the founding year.

GoPay says 19,823 merchants use it (pricing page, October 2026). On 15 January 2025 it reported CZK 98.7 billion in payment volume for 2024, up 33% on the year, including its first CZK 10 billion month in December. On 13 January 2026 it reported 97,048,432 payments processed in 2025, up 11.38%. Its About page says it has more than 80 staff.

Ownership: part of Worldline

Worldline completed the purchase of a 53% majority stake on 4 September 2020. At the time GoPay had about 10,000 e-shops, 45 employees and about €7 million of 2019 revenue. Worldline had the right to buy the remaining 47% in 2022. The Czech company register shows the 53% coming from Schwarz's own holding, and Worldline registered as 100% owner on 26 October 2022, after the remaining stakes held by Schwarz and BUDEX direct s.r.o. passed to it. Forbes Czech reported the sale in August 2023. On 1 April 2025 GOPAY s.r.o. ceased to exist through a cross-border merger into WORLDLINE NV, a Belgian company. GoPay now trades as GoPay Czech, odštěpný závod, the Czech branch of Worldline NV. Merchants' contracts passed to the branch automatically. GoPay's FAQ on the change says fees, bank account numbers and integrations did not change, and Petr Vaněk stayed on as CEO.

Worldline has sold several businesses in 2026, but GoPay is not among them. Its half-year 2026 report instead describes an accelerated migration from its older Ogone platform, and of small-business portfolios, onto GoPay, which makes GoPay a core part of the group's online offering rather than a unit up for sale. Our Worldline review covers the parent's restructuring and finances.

Why we list GoPay as a payment facilitator

GoPay calls itself a payment gateway, but it does more than pass card data to an acquirer. The merchant signs one contract with GoPay, a licensed payment institution. Money from all payment methods lands in the merchant's GoPay account and is settled to the merchant's bank, minus GoPay's fees, on a schedule GoPay controls. GoPay can also set reserves on that account. Card acceptance runs through banks GoPay contracts with, and those banks' general terms are written into the merchant's contract. The banks can also have a merchant's service ended. That is the facilitator model: GoPay onboards the merchant under its own relationships with acquirers and holds the merchant agreement. It is not a merchant of record, because the shop remains the seller.

What it costs

GoPay's Czech pricing page, checked in October 2026, prices in CZK and offers three plans. It does not mention VAT. GoPay's fee schedule says all its fees are exempt from VAT.

• Start (for new shops that have not accepted cards before): card payments free for 12 months on up to CZK 50,000 a month, then 0.95% + CZK 0. Bank transfers and QR payments 0.95% + CZK 0. Monthly fee waived for 12 months, then CZK 80 in months with up to CZK 50,000 of volume. The free period is tied to the government-backed 'Česko platí kartou' (Czechia pays by card) promotion, which runs to 31 March 2027 unless the Ministry of Industry and Trade or GoPay ends it earlier, and is open to businesses that have not had a card terminal or e-shop gateway in the past 12 months.
• Growth (for shops already selling): cards, bank transfers and QR payments free for three months or the first CZK 500,000 of volume, whichever comes first, then 0.95% + CZK 0. Monthly fee CZK 80 in months with up to CZK 50,000 of volume.
• Custom (revenue above CZK 1 million): individual rates, no monthly fee.
• On Start and Growth: deferred payment 0.89%, pay in three instalments 1.99%, settlement to your bank CZK 10, refund CZK 5, chargeback CZK 990, card update CZK 2 (optional), card payment without 3D Secure CZK 0.30 (optional).
• Slovakia (EUR): Start is free for six months on up to €2,000 a month, then 0.95%. Growth is free for three months or €20,000. The monthly fee is €3.50 in months up to €2,000, settlement €0.50, chargeback €41, refund €0.08 and pay-in-thirds 3.29%. Custom starts at €40,000 a month.

To illustrate: once the free period ends, a Growth-plan shop with CZK 200,000 of card sales in a month pays CZK 1,900 in transaction fees. It pays no monthly fee because its volume is above CZK 50,000, but pays CZK 10 for each settlement to its bank. A shop with CZK 30,000 of sales pays CZK 285 plus the CZK 80 monthly fee, about 1.2% of its sales.

GoPay also publishes a general fee schedule (sazebník) in its help centre. A new version takes effect on 1 November 2026, and it looks nothing like the plans. It lists a CZK 190 monthly fee in months under CZK 50,000 and card fees built from interchange, card-scheme fees and 1.76% + CZK 3 for GoPay and third parties. On consumer Visa and Mastercard cards the total comes to 2.15% to 2.30% + CZK 3, and up to 4.68% + CZK 3 on other cards. It also lists 2.20% + CZK 3 for bank transfers and wallets. GoPay's documents explain how the two fit together. The plan prices are written into your registration form. The gateway terms make the fee schedule part of your contract, but the account terms say an individual agreement takes precedence over it, and the promotion terms charge fees as set in the registration form, falling back to the schedule only for items the form does not cover. The pricing page's FAQ says GoPay does not raise prices automatically by volume or over time. The account terms, however, let GoPay change the fee schedule unilaterally on two months' notice, cut to 14 days for businesses that are not small businesses under Czech payments law. We could not tell from public pages what existing merchants without a plan pay. Before you sign, check that your registration form sets every fee, including what applies when a promotion ends.

The terms also forbid passing payment-method fees on to customers and require all methods to be offered equally, so you cannot surcharge cards or steer customers to cheaper methods by price.

How it works and what it offers

GoPay offers more than 50 payment methods through one integration. They include Visa, Mastercard and Maestro cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Click to Pay. There are instant bank-transfer buttons for Česká spořitelna, Komerční banka, ČSOB, Moneta, Air Bank, Fio, Raiffeisen, UniCredit, mBank and others, plus QR payments, deferred payment and pay-in-three, and PayPal. Smaller methods include paysafecard, Premium SMS, M-platba, Bitcoin, and payment from a GoPay wallet, which the company says has more than 250,000 users. Merchants can choose a redirect gateway, an inline gateway shown over their own page, or the newer embedded 'GoPay Checkout'. The gateway supports recurring and pre-authorised payments, card tokenisation for one-click repeat purchases, payment links and refunds from the dashboard. There are plugins for WooCommerce, PrestaShop, OpenCart and Shopify, and a REST API with a sandbox.

Existing merchants can apply for revenue-based financing of CZK 50,000 to CZK 2 million, repaid automatically from gateway takings, at a cost GoPay advertises as from 0.8% a month. For in-person payments, GoPay refers merchants to KB SmartPay terminals, which come with a contract from KB SmartPay. GoPay does not offer terminals itself.

Payouts

Money from payments is credited to your GoPay business account, then paid to your bank in a batch GoPay calls clearing. You can set clearing to daily, weekly or monthly, and the help centre says the default is monthly. You can also set a minimum balance below which no clearing runs. A delay set per account, the 'D parameter', covers the days GoPay waits for customer funds to reach its own bank. GoPay says it may pay out only money it has actually received. In its example, with D set to 3, a weekly cycle ending on Sunday pays out on Thursday. A manual clearing entered before 10am on a working day is sent the same day, and otherwise the next working day. Transfers within the same bank arrive within minutes, and transfers to other banks the next day. Each settlement costs CZK 10 on the standard plans.

Contract terms, reserves and holds

There is no fixed term, and setup and cancellation are free. GoPay's help centre says a merchant can leave by giving two months' notice under the terms, or by agreement: you email support with your account number and the date to switch the gateway off. Under the account terms (in force from 1 April 2025) you can close your account at any time without giving a reason, once everything you owe is paid. GoPay can end the contract on two months' notice. It can withdraw immediately for serious or repeated breaches, or without giving any reason within three months of signing. It can close an account with no transactions for 14 months, and it can deactivate a gateway with no payments for six months.

Several terms deserve attention. GoPay can set a reserve on your account at any time, at its sole discretion, as a fixed sum, a percentage of recent volume or both, although it must tell you when it does. It can block an account or suspend service with immediate effect when it suspects a breach. It can delay settling transactions until it has the fee details it needs from third parties. Statements count as approved 30 days after they are made available, after which you cannot dispute them. You are liable for damage caused by breaching the terms regardless of fault. If GoPay changes the terms, it must give two months' notice (14 days if you are not a small business), and you can leave free of charge before the change takes effect. Contracts are governed by Czech law. Disputes can go to the Czech Financial Arbiter, mediation or the Czech courts.

Regulation

According to its own terms and contact page, GoPay Czech is a payment institution regulated by the National Bank of Belgium. The NBB supervises its regulated activity and the Czech National Bank supervises its anti-money-laundering compliance. This replaces the Czech licences held by GOPAY s.r.o. before April 2025. We could not open the NBB's own register, though the NBB's 2026 payments report confirms that Worldline SA/NV is under its prudential supervision. GoPay says it has been certified to PCI DSS Level 1 since 2015 and that independent auditors check its accounts every year.

Reputation and complaints

On Trustpilot, GoPay's claimed profile scores 2.1 from 26 reviews as of October 2026. 35% are five-star and 65% one-star, with nothing in between, and GoPay has replied to 20% of negative reviews. Recent one-star reviews describe onboarding as bureaucratic, including one reviewer's complaint that approval needs a working website that cannot launch without a gateway. Others describe poor support, difficulty deleting an account, and in one case funds a payer said never reached the merchant. Twenty-six reviews is a very small sample for a gateway that says it has almost 20,000 merchants, and many reviewers are payers rather than merchants. We found no published Czech National Bank sanction naming GoPay, and no lawsuits or enforcement actions naming it.

Who GoPay suits

GoPay suits Czech and Slovak online shops that sell mainly to local customers and want local bank buttons, QR payments and pay-later options alongside cards and wallets, under one contract with a regulated, well-funded provider. New shops get the most from the free introductory periods. Above about CZK 50,000 a month, the flat 0.95% with no fixed fee is easy to forecast. It suits businesses less well if they sell mostly outside Europe, need in-person and online payments from one provider, cannot absorb a CZK 990 chargeback fee, or need settlement faster than they can arrange with GoPay. Whatever your size, get the rates and settlement settings in your registration form in writing before you sign.