Best European Payment Processing

#1 SumUp

Berlin, Germany Founded 2012 From 1.69% per in-person transaction No subscription; reader from about €39

Best for: Small businesses, sole traders and mobile merchants

• Operating company. SumUp
• Jurisdiction. EU (Germany)
• Where the data sits. EU/UK
• Independent checks. PCI DSS
• Source code. Closed source
• Replaces. Square, iZettle

SumUp is the lowest-friction way in Europe to start accepting card payments, and that is the whole proposition.

A SumUp Air reader costs about €39 as a one-time purchase, connects to a phone over Bluetooth and takes contactless, chip and magnetic stripe payments; the Solo is a standalone terminal with its own screen and mobile connectivity for merchants who would rather not involve a phone at all.

In-person transactions cost a flat 1.69% with no monthly fee, no minimum volume and no contract. For a market stall, a food truck or a sole trader, the decision to accept cards stops being a procurement exercise.

SumUp is headquartered in Berlin with major operations in London, and is registered as an authorised payment institution with the FCA and supervised by the corresponding authority in each European market where it operates.

Card processing is PCI DSS compliant and transaction data stays inside European regulatory frameworks, which removes the cross-border transfer question that a US processor raises. Beyond the reader, SumUp bundles a POS app, online payments at around 2.5% plus a fixed fee, invoicing and a business account.

Standout feature. A one-time €39 reader with no subscription attached: SumUp is the only provider in this category where the entire cost of starting is the price of the hardware.

#2 Adyen

Amsterdam, Netherlands Founded 2006 Interchange-plus; about €0.11 + scheme fee per transaction Sales process, no self-serve trial

Best for: Mid-market and enterprise merchants with online and in-store operations

• Operating company. Adyen N.V.
• Jurisdiction. EU (Netherlands)
• Where the data sits. EU data centres
• Independent checks. PCI DSS Level 1
• Source code. Closed source
• Replaces. Stripe, Braintree

Adyen is one platform where its competitors are a stack of acquisitions.

Online payments, in-store terminals, risk management, issuing and financial reporting all run on the same system with a shared data layer, so a customer who buys online and returns in store produces one reconciliation instead of two.

Adyen designs its own terminal hardware and software, which is why firmware, security patches and new payment method support roll out consistently across a fleet rather than per device. The platform supports more than 250 payment methods across 175 currencies, with local acquiring licences in dozens of markets.

Adyen N.V. is headquartered in Amsterdam, listed on Euronext Amsterdam, and holds a full banking licence from De Nederlandsche Bank — which means Adyen holds merchant funds in segregated accounts rather than through a third-party banking partner, and is supervised as a financial institution under European banking rules.

European transaction data is processed and stored in the EU. Pricing is interchange-plus: roughly €0.11 plus the scheme fee per transaction, with no setup or monthly fees, and volume-based custom pricing for large enterprises.

Standout feature. A full banking licence: Adyen is the only processor in this category that holds merchant funds itself under European banking supervision instead of parking them with a partner bank.

#3 Mollie

Amsterdam, Netherlands Founded 2004 Per method, from €0.29 (iDEAL); cards from €0.29 + 1.8% No monthly fee, pay per transaction

Best for: European e-commerce that needs local payment methods

• Operating company. Mollie B.V.
• Jurisdiction. EU (Netherlands)
• Where the data sits. EU data centres
• Independent checks. PCI DSS, PSD2/SCA
• Source code. Closed source
• Replaces. Stripe, PayPal

Mollie is the European local-methods specialist, and for a webshop selling across European borders that is usually the deciding factor.

Mollie covers iDEAL, Bancontact, SOFORT, EPS, Giropay and SEPA Direct Debit alongside Visa, Mastercard, Maestro and Amex, Apple Pay and Google Pay, and buy-now-pay-later through Klarna, in3, Riverty and Billie. Payment preference in Europe is national rather than continental, and a checkout missing the method a country actually uses loses those sales outright rather than converting them at a lower rate.

Mollie B.V. is based in Amsterdam and has been authorised by De Nederlandsche Bank as an electronic money institution since February 2025, covering e-money issuance, payment transactions and payment initiation. Payment data is processed and stored in European data centres.

Pricing is transaction-fee-only with no monthly cost, no setup fee and no minimum commitment: from €0.29 for an iDEAL payment and from €0.29 + 1.8% for a European card, published per method on Mollie's own site. PSD2 Strong Customer Authentication is handled in the checkout with automatic exemption handling through transaction risk analysis.

Standout feature. Per-method transparent pricing: Mollie is the only processor here that publishes what each individual payment method costs, so a merchant can price a checkout before integrating it.

#4 Klarna

Stockholm, Sweden Founded 2005 About 2.5%–5.99% + a fixed fee, by market and product Merchant onboarding, no trial

Best for: E-commerce merchants who want flexible consumer payment options

• Operating company. Klarna Bank AB
• Jurisdiction. EU (Sweden)
• Where the data sits. EU
• Independent checks. Swedish banking licence
• Source code. Closed source
• Replaces. Afterpay, PayPal Credit

Klarna is not a cheaper way to take a payment, and treating it as one is the mistake that makes merchants unhappy with it.

Klarna offers consumers Pay Now, Pay Later within 30 days, and Pay in 3 or 4 interest-free instalments, and pays the merchant regardless of whether the consumer eventually pays Klarna. What a merchant buys at 2.5% to 5.99% plus a fixed fee is a higher conversion rate, a larger average order value, and credit and fraud risk moved off its own books — which is worth the premium in fashion, lifestyle and mid-range retail, and rarely worth it elsewhere.

Klarna Bank AB is headquartered in Stockholm and operates under a Swedish banking licence, which places it under EU banking supervision and makes it the strongest European-established alternative to US buy-now-pay-later providers. Consumer protections are regulated accordingly: instalment products are interest-free when paid on time, and late fees are capped and vary by country to limit debt spirals. Beyond checkout, Klarna runs a consumer shopping app that merchants can appear in, which turns the payment method into a marketing channel.

Standout feature. The consumer app: Klarna is the only provider in this category where being a payment method also puts a merchant in front of shoppers who started their search inside the payment app.

#5 GoCardless

London, United Kingdom Founded 2011 From 1% + about £0.20 per transaction, capped No monthly fee on the standard plan

Best for: Subscription businesses collecting recurring bank payments

• Operating company. GoCardless Ltd
• Jurisdiction. United Kingdom (adequacy decision, outside the EEA)
• Where the data sits. UK/EU
• Independent checks. FCA-authorised payment institution
• Source code. Closed source
• Replaces. Stripe Billing, PayPal subscriptions

GoCardless collects money from bank accounts and does nothing else, and for a subscription business that narrowness is exactly right.

GoCardless runs Direct Debit and SEPA mandates rather than card payments, which costs less — 1% plus about £0.20 with a per-transaction cap — and, more importantly, does not fail when a card expires. Involuntary churn from expired and reissued cards is the largest silent revenue loss in most subscription businesses, and a Direct Debit mandate has no expiry date to trip over. Instant Bank Pay adds open-banking one-off payments where immediate confirmation is needed.

GoCardless Ltd is based in London and authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority as a payment institution. The United Kingdom holds an adequacy decision from the European Commission, so transfers from the EU are lawful without standard contractual clauses — but that is an adequacy decision rather than intra-EEA processing, and it belongs in the DPA. Integrations cover the major subscription and accounting platforms, and enterprise customers can negotiate volume pricing on top of the standard plan.

Standout feature. Bank mandates instead of card credentials: GoCardless is the only provider here where a customer's payment method cannot expire, which is why its churn profile is different from every card processor in this category.

#6 Payrexx

Thun, Switzerland Founded 2015 From 1.25% + CHF 0.18 (TWINT); cards 1.65% + CHF 0.18 30-day free trial

Best for: Swiss businesses and merchants serving the DACH market

• Operating company. Payrexx AG
• Jurisdiction. Switzerland (adequacy decision, outside the EEA)
• Where the data sits. Switzerland
• Independent checks. PCI DSS
• Source code. Closed source
• Replaces. Stripe, PayPal

Payrexx is the Swiss answer in this category, and for a merchant selling into Switzerland that is not a small detail.

Payrexx supports TWINT — the Swiss mobile payment method no international processor treats as first class — alongside the Swiss QR-bill, cards and multi-currency handling, and hosts the data in Switzerland. Payment links, hosted checkout pages and subscription billing cover the setup work without a developer, which suits small merchants who need to take a payment this week rather than integrate an API next quarter.

Payrexx AG is based in Thun and prices transparently with no setup fee or monthly minimum: 1.25% + CHF 0.18 for TWINT, 1.65% + CHF 0.18 for Visa and Mastercard, and 0.50% on invoice-based purchases, with discounted rates for startups and non-profits and a 30-day free trial covering all features.

Switzerland holds an adequacy decision from the European Commission, so an EU merchant transfers lawfully without standard contractual clauses — but as with the UK, that is adequacy rather than intra-EEA processing.

Standout feature. TWINT plus the Swiss QR-bill in one gateway: Payrexx is the only processor in this category that treats the two payment methods Swiss customers actually reach for as primary rather than optional.

#7 Worldline

Bezons, France Founded 1990 Enterprise pricing on request Contact sales

Best for: Large merchants and banks needing pan-European acquiring

• Operating company. Worldline SA
• Jurisdiction. EU (France)
• Where the data sits. EU
• Independent checks. PCI DSS, GDPR
• Source code. Closed source
• Replaces. Stripe at enterprise scale, Fiserv, Global Payments

Worldline is the largest payment processor in Europe and operates at a scale nothing else in this category approaches — around €4.6 billion of revenue, and infrastructure that sits underneath a substantial share of European card transactions whether or not the merchant has heard the name.

What it sells is acquiring rather than a developer API: the regulated business of accepting card payments, settling them and moving the money, across merchant services, transactional services and services sold to banks themselves. For a large retailer, a transport operator or a financial institution, that is a different purchase from a payment API — closer to choosing a bank than choosing a library.

Worldline SA has operated from Bezons since 1990 and is European throughout, which for payment infrastructure carries weight beyond preference: payment data is among the most regulated categories that exists, and the sovereignty argument about European payment rails being run by European companies is a policy conversation as much as a commercial one.

Pricing is enterprise and quoted, engagement is sales-led with an implementation project attached, and for anyone who wants to take a card on a website this afternoon, Mollie or Adyen are the answer instead.

Standout feature. Payment rails at national scale run by a European company — the layer under the layer most merchants buy.

#8 Checkout.com

London, United Kingdom Founded 2012 Custom flat-rate or interchange-plus pricing quoted per merchant; no setup, monthly or account fee; free processing for registered charities Sales process, no self-serve trial

Best for: Large multi-market e-commerce and marketplace merchants

• Operating company. Checkout Ltd
• Jurisdiction. United Kingdom (adequacy decision, outside the EEA)
• Where the data sits. UK/EU
• Independent checks. FCA e-money institution (ref. 900816); PCI DSS Level 1
• Source code. Closed source
• Replaces. Stripe, Adyen, Braintree

Checkout.com is a full-stack payment gateway and acquirer aimed at large online merchants that need one API for acceptance, authorisation, settlement, payouts and fraud screening across many markets and currencies.

Rather than reselling a third-party bank's acquiring licence for everything, Checkout.com holds its own principal membership with Visa, Mastercard, JCB, UnionPay International and Diners Club/Discover, which keeps more of the transaction inside Checkout.com's own infrastructure. Merchants choose between a fully flat-rate plan or an interchange-plus model with scheme, processor and interchange fees broken out separately, and Checkout.com states no setup fee, no surprise fee and no account maintenance fee under either model.

Checkout Ltd is registered in England and Wales under company number 08037323, headquartered at Wenlock Works in London, and authorised by the FCA as an electronic money institution (reference 900816).

For merchants and cardholders inside the EEA, the group's Checkout SAS entity is separately authorised by France's ACPR as an electronic money institution, so European transactions can run under an EU licence rather than only a UK one — a second-jurisdiction structure the GoCardless entry in this category does not have.

Card processing is PCI DSS Level 1 certified through CKO Technology Services Ltd, a company within the Checkout.com group. The company was founded by Guillaume Pousaz in 2012 and remains under his control rather than a bank's or a card scheme's.

What Checkout.com does not offer is a way to start today. There is no self-serve signup and no published price list: onboarding runs through a sales process, and the flat-rate or interchange-plus quote depends on the merchant's risk category and volume, the same opacity as Adyen's interchange-plus model elsewhere in this category.

That makes Checkout.com a fit for a merchant already processing meaningful volume across several markets that wants one contract and one API instead of several, not a business taking its first card payment this month.

Standout feature. Two licences, one platform: Checkout.com pairs a UK FCA e-money licence with a separate French ACPR one for its EEA customers.

#9 Nexi

Milan, Italy Founded 2017 Enterprise and SME pricing quoted per merchant or bank; no published rate card Contact sales

Best for: Banks and large retailers needing pan-European acquiring

• Operating company. Nexi S.p.A.
• Jurisdiction. EU (Italy)
• Source code. Closed source
• Replaces. Worldpay, Fiserv, Global Payments

Nexi is the largest payments group headquartered in Italy and one of the largest in Europe, covering card issuing, merchant acquiring, digital corporate banking and open banking infrastructure for banks, retailers and public-sector bodies.

The current group was formed in 2017 when ICBPI and CartaSi merged, then grew through the 2021–2022 combination with Denmark's Nets and Italy's SIA, a deal the company describes as building "the European PayTech leader". Nexi listed on Borsa Italiana in April 2019 and has since extended acquiring operations into Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Finland.

Nexi S.p.A. is headquartered at Corso Sempione 55 in Milan and registered with the Milan, Monza Brianza and Lodi companies register, governed under Italian company law as a listed entity.

No single shareholder holds a majority: Nexi's own disclosures show Evergood H&F Lux — a vehicle linked to the US private equity firm Hellman & Friedman — at just over 20%, the Italian state-backed Cassa Depositi e Prestiti close behind at around 19%, and the remainder in free float on the exchange.

That is far more dispersed than a single foreign-owned parent, but it is worth knowing the largest single shareholder traces back to a US buyout fund rather than an Italian or European one.

Nexi competes with Adyen and Worldline at the enterprise end of this category rather than with SumUp or Mollie, and like both of those it has no self-serve pricing: quotes are negotiated per bank or merchant, with no published rate card or trial to point to.

What Nexi brings that neither Adyen nor Worldline can claim outright is scale assembled from three national payment infrastructures at once — Italian, Nordic/Baltic and pan-European — which matters most to a bank or a large retailer buying acquiring as infrastructure rather than as a checkout button.

Standout feature. Three of Europe's national payment infrastructures — ICBPI/CartaSi, Nets and SIA — merged into the single, publicly listed Nexi Group.

#10 Trustly

Stockholm, Sweden Founded 2008 Per-transaction pricing negotiated per merchant; no published rate card Sales process, no self-serve trial

Best for: Merchants wanting bank-transfer checkout instead of cards

• Operating company. Trustly Group AB
• Jurisdiction. EU (Sweden)
• Where the data sits. EU
• Independent checks. ISO 27001; authorised Swedish payment institution (Finansinspektionen)
• Source code. Closed source
• Replaces. PayPal, Klarna Pay Now, card payments for bank-transfer checkout

Trustly is an account-to-account payments network: instead of a card number, a shopper is redirected to their own bank to authorise a payment directly from their account, so no card details are captured, stored or shared with the merchant at all.

Founded in Stockholm in 2008, Trustly now connects to more than 12,000 banks and serves around 9,000 merchants across 33 markets, covering one-off e-commerce checkout, recurring "pay by bank" billing, instant payouts and account-verification data products from a single connection.

Trustly Group AB is registered in Sweden (corporate identity number 556754-8655) and authorised as a payment institution supervised by Finansinspektionen, the Swedish financial regulator, with a separate Trustly UK Limited authorised by the FCA for UK volume.

The company is ISO 27001 certified and hosts on ISO 27001-certified infrastructure.

Trustly is majority owned by the Swedish private equity firm Nordic Capital, which took control from Bridgepoint in 2018 alongside minority investors including BlackRock Private Equity Partners — European ownership, but not founder-led the way GoCardless or Mollie still are. In 2023 Trustly acquired the French recurring-payments specialist SlimPay, which now operates inside the same group under its own ACPR authorisation rather than as a separate product.

Trustly sits closer to GoCardless than to Adyen or Mollie in what it replaces: both remove the card entirely rather than processing one, and both undercut card rates once a bank supports the flow.

The difference is mechanism and use case — GoCardless pulls a recurring Direct Debit mandate that does not need the shopper present, while Trustly redirects the shopper to authorise each payment, or a variable recurring payment, through their own banking app, which suits one-off e-commerce, gaming deposits and insurance premiums as much as subscriptions. Pricing is not published; merchants are quoted per contract.

Standout feature. Payment without a card: Trustly moves money bank-to-bank in real time, so there is no card number to steal, store or expire.

#11 Wallee

Winterthur, Switzerland Basic plan CHF 19.95/month plus CHF 0.20 per e-commerce transaction; Visa/Mastercard CHF 0.20 + 1.55%, Maestro CHF 0.20 + 0.49% + CHF 0.10; negotiated pricing above CHF 50,000/month

Best for: Swiss and DACH merchants wanting transparent per-transaction pricing

• Operating company. Wallee Group AG
• Jurisdiction. Switzerland (adequacy decision, outside the EEA)
• Where the data sits. Switzerland
• Independent checks. PCI DSS Level 1
• Source code. Closed source
• Replaces. Stripe, Datatrans, PayPal

Wallee is a Swiss payment platform that processes online, in-store and vending-machine payments through one API, covering more than 50 payment methods including Visa, Mastercard, Maestro, TWINT, PostFinance, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Klarna and a set of Nordic online-banking redirects.

Where several processors in this category quote a rate per merchant, Wallee publishes its Basic-plan pricing outright: CHF 19.95 a month plus CHF 0.20 per e-commerce transaction, Visa and Mastercard at CHF 0.20 plus 1.55%, and Maestro at CHF 0.20 plus 0.49% and CHF 0.10, with negotiated volume pricing once a merchant clears roughly CHF 50,000 a month.

Wallee Group AG is registered in the Canton of Zurich (commercial register number CHE-287.965.343) and headquartered in Winterthur, with subsidiaries also registered in Germany, Lithuania and Luxembourg for its wider European footprint. Card processing is PCI DSS Level 1 certified, audited annually.

Switzerland sits outside the EU and the EEA and relies on the European Commission's adequacy decision for Swiss data transfers, the same basis Payrexx operates on elsewhere in this category — an adequacy decision rather than intra-EEA processing, and worth the same line in a DPA.

Against Payrexx, the other Swiss entry here, Wallee is the broader platform: more payment methods, its own in-store and vending-machine hardware integrations, and registered subsidiaries beyond Switzerland rather than a single-country product.

Payrexx still owns the TWINT-plus-QR-bill positioning specifically and its 30-day trial is more generous for a merchant that wants to test before committing. What sets Wallee apart from the processors that only quote a price after a sales call is that its per-transaction fees, including the Maestro surcharge, sit on a public page before any conversation with sales happens at all.

Standout feature. A public price list down to the Maestro surcharge: Wallee states its per-transaction fees on a pricing page rather than quoting each merchant individually.

#12 Billie

Berlin, Germany Founded 2017 Merchant fees negotiated per contract; not published

Best for: B2B merchants offering invoice, instalment or trade-account checkout

• Operating company. Billie GmbH
• Jurisdiction. EU (Germany)
• Where the data sits. Germany
• Independent checks. BaFin-supervised (Germany)
• Source code. Closed source
• Replaces. Klarna, PayPal Invoice, trade credit/factoring

Billie is a B2B payments platform built around the fact that a business buyer rarely wants to pay by card at checkout: it offers Pay Later (net terms after delivery), Pay in X (instalments) and Pay on Account (an ongoing trade credit line), with Billie paying the merchant upfront in every case regardless of whether or when the buyer settles.

The company reports processing more than €3 billion in transaction volume for over 9,000 merchant partners and 1.3 million active business buyers, and rather than only selling its own checkout, Billie plugs into Stripe, Adyen, Mollie and Klarna as a payment method inside those platforms.

Billie GmbH is registered in Berlin (Amtsgericht Charlottenburg, HRB 182428 B) and supervised by BaFin, Germany's federal financial regulator; the entity was incorporated in December 2016 and renamed Billie in March 2017, and is run by its three co-founders Aiga Senftleben, Christian Grobe and Matthias Knecht, who previously built the SME lender Zencap.

Public filings show 31 known shareholders rather than a single controlling parent, including the German investor Rocket Internet SE; Billie's own pages do not publish a full investor list, so a precise ownership breakdown beyond that cannot be confirmed.

Billie is not a substitute for the card and bank-transfer processors that make up most of this category; it solves a different problem, the one where a business buyer wants an invoice and 30 or 60 days rather than a card form.

That makes it a natural pairing with, rather than a replacement for, Adyen, Mollie or Klarna — all three already integrate Billie as a B2B payment option — and it carries the same trade-off Klarna carries for consumer BNPL: merchant fees are not published and are negotiated per contract, priced against the credit and fraud risk Billie is taking on.

Standout feature. Trade credit as checkout: Billie pays the merchant immediately and takes on the buyer's payment risk, the same logic as Klarna but built for B2B invoices.