I'm on the side of the small business owner. Full stop.
I built CompareTheFees because small businesses in this country deserve to know exactly what they're paying. Before they sign anything, and after.
It started with watching friends struggle
I watched friends pour everything into building their small businesses. The early mornings, the risk, the sacrifice. And then, months in, they discovered they'd been quietly haemorrhaging money in fees they didn't even know they were paying.
Card machine transaction fees. Monthly minimums. Hidden rental charges. Setup costs buried in the small print. Not huge amounts individually. But added together, hundreds of pounds a year draining out of businesses that could ill afford it.
Nobody told them. Nobody was looking out for them. The providers certainly weren't going to volunteer the information. And the comparison sites that existed were either too generic, too complicated, or quietly in the pockets of the very providers they were supposed to be comparing.
"Small businesses are the backbone of this country. They deserve someone in their corner, not another website collecting commissions for pointing them at the wrong product."
CompareTheFees FounderMake the hidden, visible
Card machine providers are very good at advertising their headline rate. What they're less keen to shout about is the monthly fee, the minimum transaction charge, the cost of the terminal itself, or what happens to your rate after the introductory period ends.
I built CompareTheFees to cut through that. Not just by republishing what providers tell me, but by going out and finding what small businesses across England are actually paying in the real world. Every month. On real statements. From real businesses.
That's what the monthly index is. Real data, collected independently, published openly. So that no small business owner ever has to wonder if they're being overcharged.
What I promise you
These aren't marketing words. They're the principles I hold myself to every time I publish anything on this site.
No card machine provider funds me, sponsors me, or pays to appear more favourably in my comparisons. I may earn a commission when you click through to a provider. That's how I keep the lights on. But it never influences my rankings, my data, or my recommendations. If a provider is expensive, I'll say so.
The monthly index is built from surveys of real UK small business owners. Not press releases from providers. I show you what businesses are actually seeing on their statements, not the best-case scenario from a sales brochure.
A sole trader plumber working on building sites has completely different needs to a café owner taking fifty transactions a day. I break down comparisons by business type so the advice you're reading is actually relevant to you, not someone in a completely different situation.
Fee structures change. Providers tweak their pricing. New options enter the market. I review and update comparisons monthly so you're never making a decision based on outdated information. Every page shows when it was last updated.
There are things that vary by business. Your negotiated rate, your specific contract terms, regional differences. When something depends on your individual circumstances, I say so clearly rather than pretending the answer is simple when it isn't.
The data nobody else was collecting
Every month I survey small business owners across England and ask them a simple question: what are you actually paying? Not what your contract says. Not what the provider advertises. What's on your statement right now.
I compile those responses into the UK Small Business Payment Fees Index. The only independent monthly tracker of what real businesses are actually paying in card machine fees across England. Published openly, every month, free to access.
It's the data I wished existed when my friends were signing contracts they didn't fully understand. So I built it.
Building something like this takes time. The index gets more valuable every month I publish it. The comparisons get more trusted every time I update them. I'm committed to being here for the long term because small businesses need a resource they can rely on, not one that disappears when it stops being convenient.
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