A PayPal.me alternative for UK freelancers

If you want a customer to pay you from a link, the usual UK options are PayPal (a PayPal.me link or a money request), SumUp payment links, Stripe Payment Links, Monzo Business payment links, and Paytide. They all do the basic job: you send a link, the customer pays by card, and the money reaches your bank. The differences are in what you pay per transaction, whether you need a particular bank or account, and what comes with the link — invoices with an overdue reminder, a QR code, a dashboard.

The table below sets out the published card fees. It is a starting point, not the whole picture: providers change their prices, and the cheapest option depends on the size of your payments and the cards your customers use. Check each provider's own pricing page before you decide, and see our fees page for a calculator that works out Paytide's total cost for any amount.

No, and we would rather say so plainly. Paytide's 1% (with a 20p minimum) sits on top of Stripe's own card fee, so on the same card it always costs more than creating a Stripe Payment Link yourself. On a £100.00 payment by a standard UK card, Stripe's fee is about £1.70 and Paytide's is £1.00, so you keep about £97.30.

What the extra 1% buys is everything around the link: your own address at paytide.co.uk/your-name, invoices with a PDF and one automatic reminder when they go overdue, a printable QR code, donation pages, and a dashboard showing what came in, refunds, and when Stripe is paying out. If you are comfortable in the Stripe dashboard and only need a link, Stripe on its own is the cheaper choice.

No. PayPal's friends-and-family mode is for sending money to people you know, not for paying for goods or services. When a customer pays you for work, it should be sent as a goods-and-services payment, which is where PayPal's commercial fee applies. Asking clients to use friends and family to avoid the fee breaks PayPal's terms and removes the protection that commercial payments carry for both sides.

So when you compare PayPal with other options, compare its commercial rate — 2.9% plus 30p for a UK payment at the time of writing — rather than the free personal transfer. That is the fair comparison for a freelancer or a small business taking money for work done, and it is the figure in the table above.

With Paytide, no. A customer opens your link, types the amount (or sees the fixed price of a link or invoice), and pays on a secure page hosted by Stripe. They can pay by card, and by Apple Pay or Google Pay where their device supports it. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing to install.

Card details go straight to Stripe. Paytide never sees or stores them, and never holds your money: payments are taken on your own Stripe account and paid out by Stripe to your bank on the schedule you choose. If you want to know more about how links like this work in general, read what a payment link is.

It depends on what you need. If your customers already use PayPal and expect to pay that way, PayPal is familiar to them, but its commercial rate is the highest in the table. If you already bank with Monzo Business, its payment links add no fee on top of Stripe's. If you only need a bare link at the lowest cost and are happy to manage it in Stripe, Stripe Payment Links is cheapest.

Paytide is for freelancers and sole traders who want a single, memorable link in their own name, plus invoices with an overdue reminder, a QR code and a simple dashboard, without a monthly fee and with any bank account. If that is you, our guide to getting paid as a UK freelancer covers invoices, payment terms and chasing late payers in more detail.