SumUp Air review: affordable, no-fuss terminal for card payments

How SumUp payments work

The payment process is simple: the main screen of the app shows the product menu (with products you’ve added) and the option to manually enter an amount in pounds. Entering an amount allows you to type a description of the purchased item/service. You can enter more than one price if wishing to itemise the bill manually.

When ready to pay, you tap “Charge”. If cash payments are enabled in settings, you can enter an amount paid in cash. If choosing card payment, the transaction amount will be sent to the card reader – provided it is connected and nearby – and the card reader display will switch on prompting the customer to insert or tap their card or phone.

Once the payment has gone through, an email or text receipt can be sent to the customer, or you can print a receipt from a wireless printer connected in the app.

Photo: SumUp

The SumUp Air card reader is operated from an app on a smartphone or tablet.

The minimum possible payment amount is £1. Customers can tap a contactless card or phone for amounts up to £30 without entering a PIN, but the card terminal will require authentication for amounts above. There’s no transaction limit on Apple Pay and Google Pay payments.

SumUp initiates payments – minus transaction fee – to your bank account daily, although it takes 1–3 working days to clear in the bank account.

Affordable, fixed transaction rate

Like its competitors iZettle and Square, there are no ongoing or monthly fees with SumUp – you only pay a flat rate of 1.69% per transaction. The Air card reader currently costs costs £14.50 excl. VAT (normally £29).

No monthly minimum sales volume is required, so you’re not charged anything if you don’t make sales for any length of time.

Refunds are free if processed before the transaction has been paid into your bank account, i.e. within a couple of days of the original purchase. After that, you can only process refunds if there are enough outstanding payouts (money not yet settled in bank account), and SumUp will keep the 1.69% card fee originally paid.

Chargebacks have an admin cost of £10 each.

Additional payment methods are email invoicing, SMS, payment link and QR code payments. These are automatically available in the SumUp account from the start.

A Virtual Terminal can also be activated for qualifying merchants. You’ll need to contact customer support, answer some questions about your business and payment usage, then they will review your account as a whole and activate the Virtual Terminal if all is well.

Virtual terminal payments cost 2.95% + 25p per transaction, while QR codes, payment links and email invoices are 2.5% per transaction. SumUp is one of a few providers in the UK that can offer remote payments without a mandatory monthly charge (others are Square and iZettle).

Many businesses making £5,000 or less per month in card payments find SumUp an affordable option, along with iZettle and Square.

Card reader specs

SumUp Air is compatible with most Android tablets and smartphones using at least Android 4.4. iPod Touch 5G-6G, iPhone 5 and newer models, as well as 3rd+ generation iPads, are compatible provided you have iOS 9.0 or higher. Bluetooth 4.0 is required to connect the mobile device with the card reader.

The Air comes with a free micro USB cable, which you can plug into a computer or power supply when the card machine needs charging (a wall plug is bought separately).

At full charge, it will last about 500 transactions. Busy stores may want to opt for SumUp’s charging station, which not only keeps the Air charged all day – it also looks good and keeps the reader in place on a countertop.

Photo: ES, Mobile Transaction

SumUp Air from the top, showing chip card slot and power button.

The card reader is quite stylish with a glass surface and plastic base that’s nice to hold in the hand. It’s tamper-proof, meaning any external effort to manipulate its technology will shut it down so it can’t be used it any more. That’s great for security, but you need to make sure it’s not near highly magnetic fields, which could inadvertently deem it permanently unusable.

Photo: ES, Mobile Transaction

SumUp Air from the bottom, showing charging socket.

It’s possible to link several SumUp terminals to your main account, but you can’t link any other brand of card machine to it. The SumUp app does not directly connect to POS accessories like cash drawers or barcode scanners, except for compatible receipt printers that may link to a cash drawer that way.

SumUp Air vs SumUp 3G

If you prefer a card machine that doesn’t require a mobile app to accept payments, the standalone terminal SumUp 3G is an alternative.

The 3G model has an inbuilt SIM card with unlimited data, so you don’t need a connected mobile device to process card payments through the terminal. This could be a handier solution for those who don’t need elaborate POS features, but instead prefer one portable device for card payments or just an extra terminal to use independently from the point of sale.

The card fee is the same as Air’s, i.e. 1.69% for all payments, but the upfront cost is higher at £99 + VAT. As with Air, there are no other ongoing costs, and you can expect the hardware quality to be the same.