SumUp Alternative With No Transaction Fees

If you’re searching for a SumUp alternative with no transaction fees, you’ve already done the math that matters: that flat 1.69% stops feeling small once you see it stacked up over a month. Let me be straight with you about what’s actually out there, because most “alternatives” just swap one percentage for a slightly smaller one.

What does SumUp actually cost?

SumUp charges a flat 1.69% per in-person card transaction, with no monthly fee, no minimum, and no contract. Readers start around 39 euros as a one-time buy. Clean and honest, and a big reason it won so many small merchants.

But flat doesn’t mean free, and two details bite harder than the headline:

A business doing 50,000 euros a month at 1.69% hands over 845 euros in fees. SumUp doesn’t offer volume discounts, so that rate never improves no matter how much you grow. And on refunds, SumUp keeps the original processing fee. Refund a sale and you eat the cost of having made it. For events, deposits, or anything return-heavy, that quietly adds up.

There’s a paid tier too. Payments Plus costs roughly 19 euros a month and cuts the in-person rate to about 0.99%, paying for itself only once your card turnover clears roughly 3,300 euros a month. Lower, but still not zero, and now you’re paying a subscription on top.

So when someone says “no transaction fees,” the honest question is whether they mean a cheaper card rate or genuinely 0%. Those are different things.

Which SumUp alternatives are actually cheaper?

If you want to stay on the card-reader model, here’s the realistic field. Spoiler: nobody on flat card rates gets you to zero.

Provider	In-person rate	Hardware from	Refund fee	The catch
SumUp	1.69% flat	~39 euros	Keeps original fee	No volume discounts
Zettle (PayPal)	~1.75% flat	~30 euros	Varies	Settlement can be paused for review
Square	1.75% chip/contactless	~39 euros	Varies	Pricier in person than SumUp
SumUp Payments Plus	~0.99%	50% off readers	Keeps original fee	19 euros/month, breaks even ~3,300 euros
Zahlo	0% transaction fees	No card reader	No chargebacks	QR-based (customer scans)

Zettle sits a hair above SumUp at around 1.75% and suits merchants already living in PayPal, though its settlement can get paused by PayPal’s risk system, especially on new accounts. Square matches that 1.75% in person and shines on inventory and reporting, but it’s consistently a touch pricier than SumUp at the counter. None of these is a zero-fee story. They’re all variations on “pay the card networks a slice of every sale.”

How can any provider charge no transaction fees?

Here’s the part that actually answers your search. The reason card payments cost 1.69% in the first place is that every swipe routes through the card schemes, Visa, Mastercard, and the interchange and scheme fees baked into that journey. You can shop for a thinner slice, but as long as you’re on the card rails, there’s always a slice.

The only way to genuinely hit 0% is to not take that route on every sale. That’s what QR-based payments do. The customer scans a code, the money moves account-to-account, and the card-network toll simply isn’t in the path. No card reader to buy either, because there’s no card being read.

That’s the model behind Zahlo. Zahlo is a low-cost POS built for independent offline merchants, kiosks, Spätis, cafés, small shops, and it charges 0% transaction fees because customers pay by scanning a QR code rather than tapping a card. No 1.69%, no refund-fee trap, and no chargebacks, which removes a whole category of risk that card-based providers leave on your plate. You also get built-in inventory tools and automatic reconciliation, so closing out the day stops being a chore.

Is QR payment realistic for a small shop?

Fair question, and the honest answer is it depends on your counter. For a Späti or kiosk doing high volumes of small-ticket sales, where 1.69% on a 4 euro basket is pure margin loss, skipping the card networks is exactly the win. The trade-off is that your customer scans instead of taps, so it works best where you’re not fighting a queue of people who insist on contactless cards. For the right shop, that’s a small ask against never paying a transaction fee again.

So what should you switch to?

If you want to stay on cards and just trim the rate, you’re choosing between SumUp at 1.69%, Square and Zettle around 1.75%, or paying SumUp 19 euros a month to reach 0.99%. Real differences, but small ones, and you’re still feeding the card networks on every sale.

If “no transaction fees” means what it says, you need a different model, not a different reader. For a small offline merchant doing lots of small baskets, Zahlo’s QR-based 0% is the version that actually delivers on the phrase, with no chargebacks and no hardware to buy. Run your own numbers first: take your monthly card turnover, multiply by 1.69%, and that figure is what a 0% model hands back to you every month. Then decide whether your customers will scan. If they will, the math isn’t close.