SumUp Air review – affordable, no-fuss way to take 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 amount if you wish to itemise the bill manually.

When ready to pay, you go to the checkout and tap “Charge”. If you’ve enabled cash payments in settings, you can enter the 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 via a compatible wireless printer connected in the app.

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

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 2–3 working days to settle in your account. You can also choose to be paid weekly or monthly on a schedule.

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 costs £29 excl. VAT (see above for the best current price).

There is no monthly minimum sales volume 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 is enough outstanding payouts (money not yet settled in bank account), and SumUp will keep the 1.69% card fee you originally paid in that case. Chargebacks have an admin cost of £10 each.

An added feature of SumUp is the option to take phone payments, which cost 2.95% + 25p per transaction. SumUp is currently one of few providers in the UK who can offer card-not-present transactions without a mandatory monthly charge (another one is Square). The virtual terminal rate is definitely more attractive than what you’ll get with PayPal’s 3.4% + 20p per transaction and a monthly fee of £20, but higher than Square’s 2.5% for keyed-in payments.

The virtual terminal is not automatically available in the SumUp account. You’ll need to contact customer support, answer some questions around your business and payment usage, then they will review your details and account as a whole. If it all looks acceptable, they will enable the virtual terminal.

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. iPhone 4s and all newer models, as well as 3rd+ generation iPads, are compatible provided you have iOS 8.0 or higher downloaded. You’ll also need Bluetooth 4.0 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. At full charge, it will last you 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.

SumUp Air from the top, showing chip card slot and power button. Photo: Emily Sorensen, Mobile Transaction

SumUp Air from the bottom, showing charging socket. Photo: Emily Sorensen, Mobile Transaction

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 you can’t use it any more. That’s great for security, but you need to make sure you don’t hold it near highly magnetic fields, which could inadvertently deem it permanently unusable.

It’s possible to link several SumUp Air readers 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.

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 card machine. 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 with Air, at 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.

App and dashboard features

SumUp’s app for the Air reader is an efficient system for accepting card and cash, but those looking for a feature-rich point of sale (POS) system will probably struggle with the limitations. Let’s see what SumUp can and cannot do.

Checkout features: The app accepts cards via the SumUp Air reader and cash. It does not accept manual card entry, vouchers, cheques, gift cards or other special payment types. You cannot add tips or accept partial payments in cash and card. Taxes can be shown on the receipt, as enabled in your settings. After each transaction, you have the option to send a receipt via email and text or print a paper receipt. A newer handy feature is receipt sharing, enabling you to share the receipt to an app on your – or a nearby – device via the cloud or Bluetooth.

The product menu is user-friendly on iPad. Image: Mobile Transaction

Product management: You can predefine products, complete with images, variants and prices. The products you add will be shown in the app menu so you can just tap to add them to checkout. It’s possible to create different category labels, e.g. “Hot Drinks” and “Food”, shown as separate tabs on the screen which you can switch between. However, SumUp does not track stock levels or allow you to add more than one level of variants per product.

You can add products from the SumUp app, with one level of variants. Image: Mobile Transaction

Reports and analytics: The online dashboard nicely shows an overview of the basic sales information within the period of time selected. You can export the sales history from a particular day, week or month as a CSV file for accounting. Payout reports are sent via email when settlements are completed.

Staff accounts: SumUp gives you the option to create multiple staff logins with basic restrictions. The only two things you can restrict are whether the staff member can view all transactions and whether they are allowed to process refunds. In the SumUp account, you can sort transactions according to user to monitor the sales by each.

Staff accounts can have refunds and transaction overviews restricted. Image: Mobile Transaction

Refunds: SumUp allows you to refund a complete or partial transaction amount via the original payment method. If the customer paid by card, the refund will be processed to that card. Refunds can only be processed if there is enough balance, i.e. outstanding payouts currently underway to your bank account, to fund the refund.

As your business grows, SumUp does offer more extensive POS systems aligned with your needs. To learn more, you’ll have to fill in a contact form on their website to request a call-back. What we do know is that SumUp partners with the POS specialists Vend, Kounta, The Good Till Co, Paymash and iKentoo, so what you get via SumUp will likely come from those providers. The point is, you shouldn’t be afraid to start with the really simple SumUp app if all you want is to receive payments now (and SumUp is what you prefer), but later anticipate growth.

Receipt printers

For those with SumUp Air who want to offer paper receipts, compatible receipt printers are available at an extra cost. SumUp’s listed options are mostly mobile, but one is stationary.

The Star Micronics SM-L200 (Bluetooth) is the only other mobile printer compatible with SumUp, costing £170 + VAT. It is the go-to choice for London cab drivers.

The only stationary printer officially compatible is the Star Micronics TSP100/TSP143 WiFi model. This is a high-performing printer that works wirelessly and can be attached to the wall if you don’t have room on a countertop. This printer tends to cost around £240 + VAT.

Alternatively, you can use an AirPrint printer for iOS or Google Cloud Print for the SumUp Android app.

Who is SumUp suitable for?

SumUp suits sole traders, entrepreneurs and small businesses requiring an extremely user-friendly card machine with no inessential extras. For instance, taxi drivers, barbers, small shops, beauty salons and hairdressers like the straightforwardness of the service. Many cafés and restaurants also use SumUp Air.

As a rule of thumb, SumUp is good if you only need a single mobile card reader and your products or services don’t need a complicated POS system with detailed analytics or things like stock level tracking (although you can always integrate with certain EPOS software for advanced features). The low, flat card rate is very competitive for lower-volume merchants.

SumUp accepts registered sole traders and businesses with a bank account owned by the organisation, business or self-employed person. SumUp also accepts not-for-profit organisations and private individuals – provided they meet certain criteria. If you’re a non-profit or private user, SumUp can advise further if you get in touch with them.

Contactless payments flow particularly well with the charging dock available to purchase from SumUp. Photo: SumUp

As with all payment companies, there are certain high-risk business types SumUp will not support, e.g. multi-level marketing, any kind of adult entertainment, door-to-door sales, and unlicensed counselling.

Those travelling abroad for business – to trade shows, for example – can use SumUp on their travels if prior arrangements have been made with the customer service team. This arrangement is available for almost all of Europe.

Customer service and user reviews

SumUp’s online support section will answer the majority of users’ questions. To contact customer support, you can phone them on weekdays between 8am and 7pm and Saturdays 8am to 5pm. If you trade on Sundays, you’ll have to wait until Monday to phone.

Alternatively, you can always email SumUp, but getting a reply can take several days. We’ve experienced response times of up to a week for non-urgent queries, but if you contact them during support hours, you can deal with urgent cases on the phone call or by email.

Users tend to rate SumUp highly compared to several other mobile card readers. On Trustpilot UK, the average rating is 8.8 out of 10.

SumUp Air fits comfortably in the palm of your hand.

How to get started

It is very easy to get started with SumUp, but you’ll have to wait about a week to receive the card reader before you can accept any payments.

You sign up on their website, filling in basic information about yourself and your business. Like any other payment provider, they perform a check against the business details you provide, but as long as you are not classed as a “restricted business”, and your bank account is the one used for your business takings, they will most likely accept it all pretty swiftly.

During the sign-up, you can order the SumUp Air reader. The card reader will be sent from Germany and arrive within five working days, but when we placed the order, it stated “5-7 working days” in our confirmation email which is different from the “3-5 business days” stated on the website. We received ours after four working ways.

The online sign-up form is not long and does not, as default, require that you send in documents. Image: Mobile Transaction

While you wait for the card reader, you can download the free SumUp app on an iOS or Android device with an internet connection (WiFi, 3G or 4G) and start adding items to the product menu.

Once your card reader arrives, you only need to switch it on, enable Bluetooth on your phone or tablet and go to the Payment Methods section in the app where you can set up the card reader (it really only takes a few steps, and it’s done).

After this, the card reader will automatically switch on when it’s in the vicinity of the mobile device with the SumUp app open and you select card payment at checkout. It’s all very automatic and intuitive from here on. Just make sure you have the card reader charged when you need it.

Our verdict

SumUp is great for low-volume merchants who just need to start accepting cards, for example in a shop, café, bar, market stall or on the go. The service has a low barrier of entry with the cheap, one-off cost of the card machine, no contract and only the pay-as-you-go fee for transactions.

Moreover, the SumUp app and terminal have just the essentials you need, without compromising on efficiency and build quality – overall, an economical choice for a lot of small businesses.

Bottom line: With its low flat rate and no-fuss offering, we highly recommend SumUp’s app-based terminal for small merchants.