takepayments Review

takepayments is a Stockport-based reseller of card machines, online payments and POS systems to UK small businesses, and since June 2024 it has been a Global Payments company. It does not hold your merchant agreement: its own terms make clear that a customer enters a separate contract with an acquiring bank for the transaction processing, while takepayments supplies the terminal, the onboarding, the PCI compliance help and the support line. Two things stand out. The first is its service record, which is the strongest of any provider reviewed on this site by volume: 4.8 on Trustpilot across 66,994 reviews, 94% of them five-star, with more than 6,000 arriving in the last twelve months. The second is that it publishes no prices whatsoever. Rates, standing charges and terminal costs are all quoted by a field consultant after a visit, on a twelve-month minimum term that then runs monthly. The company is older than its name suggests: Companies House records the entity as incorporated on 14 September 1995 and shows it trading as Targeted Transaction Managed Services, then Alphyra UK, then Payzone UK, before taking the takepayments name in December 2019.

A people business in a self-serve market

The UK card-acceptance market has spent a decade removing humans from the process. You order a reader online, photograph your ID, onboard yourself and raise a ticket when something breaks. takepayments has gone the other way. A consultant visits, scopes what the business needs, configures the terminal and hands over a phone number that a person answers seven days a week. Someone calls each year to walk the owner through the PCI DSS self-assessment, an annual obligation that most small merchants find impenetrable and otherwise face alone.

That model is expensive to run, and it shows up in the one metric where takepayments leads everything else reviewed on this site: 4.8 on Trustpilot from 66,994 reviews, with 94% at five stars, 3% at one, and 6,291 arriving in the last twelve months. A score that high on a sample that large is not an accident of small numbers. The reviews are also specific in the way genuine ones are — they name the person who helped, and they describe what actually happened: a terminal taken over remotely and working again within minutes, a compliance interview done in a single call, a switch from a previous provider handled without a gap in trading.

Two disclosures that belong next to that score

The first is that the sample is solicited. takepayments holds a paid Trustpilot subscription and Trustpilot records that the company invites its customers to review. This is entirely permitted, it is disclosed on the profile, and it does not fabricate sentiment — but it does mean the volume reflects a deliberate programme as well as goodwill, and that the profile is not directly comparable with a provider whose reviews arrive unprompted. Worth noting in the other direction that takepayments' own website claims 29,000+ reviews when the actual figure is nearly 67,000, so the marketing is behind the evidence rather than ahead of it.

The second is what the reviews are about. Read a few hundred and a pattern emerges: they are about support, onboarding, hardware and compliance help. They are almost never about price. The negative 3% is where pricing and contracts appear, and the recurring theme there is not a rate that was too high but a contract the customer did not realise they had — people who called to cancel and were told they could not, and at least one who says a sales representative assured them they were out of contract with their existing provider when they were not. A 4.8 is strong evidence that takepayments looks after customers. It is not evidence that it charges them fairly, because that is not what the reviewers are grading.

The pricing problem

takepayments publishes no prices. Not a headline rate, not a standing charge, not a terminal cost, not a PCI fee. The website offers a quote tool and a consultant visit, and every number in the relationship is assembled individually after someone has been to see you.

This site treats that as a serious deduction, and the reason is structural rather than suspicious. A bespoke quote with no published benchmark means no merchant can tell whether the rate they were offered is the rate a comparable business down the road was offered. The spread under these arrangements is usually wide, and the merchants at the wrong end of it are reliably the ones with the least time, the least leverage and the least appetite for a negotiation. Compare the position with Viva.com, which publishes an entire price pack per country including its penalty fees: you can disagree with Viva's numbers, which is precisely the advantage — you cannot disagree with numbers you are never shown.

So the practical advice is to treat the first quote as an opening position and get the whole schedule in writing before signing: the transaction rate broken out by debit, credit, commercial and non-UK cards; the monthly standing charge; the terminal rental; the PCI charge and what triggers any non-compliance fee; the minimum term; the notice period; and any early termination charge. Then ask which acquiring bank you will actually be contracted with, because the processing fees live under that agreement, not this one.

Reseller, not acquirer

takepayments' own terms are clear that customers enter separate contracts with an acquiring bank for the transaction processing. It is an independent sales organisation: it sells, installs and supports, while a bank holds the merchant agreement, carries the underwriting risk and settles the funds — next day, subject to cut-off times.

This is a common and legitimate UK structure, and in takepayments' case the division plays to its strength, since service is the part it does well. But it has consequences a merchant should understand before signing. There are two contracts to track and two parties who can each point at the other. Ending one does not end the other. And the fees that make up most of your cost are set under the agreement takepayments does not control, which is why the name of the acquiring bank belongs on your list of questions rather than being left as a detail.

The lineage, and who owns it now

The brand is young and the company is not. Companies House shows the entity incorporated on 14 September 1995 and running through three earlier names: Targeted Transaction Managed Services Limited to 2001, Alphyra UK Limited to 2007, and Payzone UK Limited until 18 December 2019, when it became takepayments Limited. Some secondary accounts put the rebrand at 2018, around the sale of the bill-payments business to the Post Office; the registry puts the name change in December 2019, and the registry is the better source.

Ownership has moved twice in the recent past. Grovepoint Capital backed a management buyout of the then-Payzone UK in 2016. In June 2024 Global Payments acquired the business — reported at around $250m — and Companies House filings show it holding more than 75% of the Stockport company. That removes any question about whether the provider will still exist in three years. It is also worth a cross-reference: Global Payments is reviewed separately here and graded C, mostly on its enterprise service record. A parent's grade and a subsidiary's are not the same thing, and on the evidence takepayments' own service record is considerably better than its owner's.

The verdict

B. If what you want from a card payments provider is that somebody competent answers the phone, takepayments has more public evidence that it delivers that than any other provider reviewed on this site — 66,994 reviews at 4.8, current, specific, and largely about the support that small businesses actually ring about. Global Payments behind it removes the durability question, and thirty years of continuous trading is not nothing.

It does not grade higher for one reason, and it is a big one: you cannot find out what it costs without letting a salesperson into your business, and there is no published benchmark to measure the answer against. Add a twelve-month minimum term with an unconfirmed notice period, and a separate acquiring contract you also have to manage, and the picture is a company that is likely to look after you well on terms you will struggle to verify as fair. Take the visit, take the service record seriously, and then negotiate as if the first number is a starting point — because with no published price, it is.