Square alternatives for small business: 7 options compared

If you're comparing Square alternatives, start by naming what you want to change: seeing what each card actually costs you, being free to leave, having one person to call, or picking your terminals and your POS software separately. Clearo Payments publishes this list and puts itself first, judged on the five criteria below. What we say about the six companies after us, and about Square, comes from each company's own website, checked in October 2026.

Square sells payments as part of a bigger package. Its payments page covers taking payments online, in store and on the go, Square says it offers free POS software with no monthly fees, and its US pricing page lists a free plan next to two paid monthly plans. If that package runs your business well, you may not need to move at all.

Clearo supplies card terminals, mobile payments and processing, not POS software; our page on what Clearo's merchant services include has the details. If POS software is the main thing you're shopping for, with menus, inventory or staff scheduling, weigh the software providers' own pages first. On this list, Clover and PayPal sell POS software with their payments.

How we chose these Square alternatives for small business

Five criteria set the order. The last one is the hardware, since that's the part your customers actually touch.

1. A bill you can check: interchange-plus pricing, so the card network's cost and the processor's margin show up as separate lines.
2. No lock-in: no long-term contract and no cancellation fee.
3. A rep who knows your shop: one dedicated person for every client.
4. A side-by-side before you commit: a free statement review that reprices a recent month of your card sales.
5. In-person acceptance: countertop and portable terminals for chip, tap and swipe, tap to pay on a phone, and mobile card readers for sales away from the counter.

After Clearo, each company's place reflects how many of these points its own pages describe. Helcim's cover interchange plus pricing, no long-term contracts and a statement comparison tool, and Stax's cover no percentage markup on interchange and no cancellation fees tied to long-term contracts. Clover, Chase, SumUp and PayPal complete the list on in-person acceptance.

Not every shop should rank things our way. If POS software is your main purchase, start there, as noted above. If you take a handful of card payments a week, a plan with no monthly fee, such as SumUp's Standard plan, can matter more than how the rate is built. And if you bank with Chase, card acceptance tied to that account may be the simplest move.

We name a country only where the company's own pages confirm it for what we describe.

1. Clearo Payments

Why Clearo ranks first among Square alternatives

Clearo Payments meets all five criteria for a business that takes most of its cards face to face. Your statement shows each card's interchange and our margin separately, no contract holds you in place, a dedicated rep knows your account, and you see a month of your own sales repriced before you decide. The hardware covers the counter, the patio, the van and the phone in your pocket.

How the pricing works when customers pay in person

We price on interchange-plus. Interchange is the fee the card networks set for each type of card, and for the consumer credit cards on Visa's schedule it's lower when the card is dipped or tapped in person than when it's used online. We pass interchange through at cost, add network fees as charged, and show our margin on its own line. Visa publishes its US interchange schedule, so you can match the pass-through lines yourself. A customer paying with a big-bank debit card costs you that card's capped interchange, not the percentage you'd pay on a rewards card.

Based on its client records, Clearo says businesses moving from flat-rate pricing have saved 20 to 50% on processing costs. Your result depends on your card mix, average ticket and monthly volume, which is what the statement review measures.

What a shop or service business gets

• POS terminals in countertop, wireless and portable models for chip, tap and swipe, accepting Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Interac.
• Mobile payments, with tap to pay and mobile card readers for markets, deliveries and jobs on site.
• A virtual terminal for phone orders, invoices, payment links and recurring billing.
• A credit card surcharging program that covers compliance, disclosure and setup.
• PCI compliance support and chargeback management tools, plus same-day or next-day funding options.

Switching from Square to Clearo

The free statement review comes first: we take a recent statement and price that month on interchange-plus, every fixed fee counted. If you move, there's no long-term contract and no cancellation fee, and your dedicated rep is your contact from the first day. Clearo says setup takes under 48 hours.

If you want menus, inventory or appointment booking from the company that processes your cards, Square itself or Clover may suit you better, since we provide terminals and processing rather than POS software.

2. Helcim

Helcim is a payment processor serving Canada and the US, and it fits a small business that wants interchange-plus pricing without signing up for years. Its pricing page lists no long-term contracts, no cancellation fees and no setup fees, on a model it calls interchange plus. At the counter it sells the Smart Terminal, and it has announced Tap to Pay on iPhone for US merchants in its point-of-sale app. Its statement comparison tool lets you check what you pay today.

Best for: small businesses that want interchange-plus pricing with no long-term contract, on a terminal or an iPhone.

3. Stax

Stax charges a monthly membership instead of a percentage markup, which can suit a shop with steady, predictable card volume. Its pricing page tiers the membership by annual processing volume, adds flat per-transaction fees, and says Stax adds no percentage markup on interchange. The same page lists compatible terminals for in-person payments and no cancellation fees tied to long-term contracts, and Stax's homepage says its support team is US-based.

Best for: shops with steady card volume that prefer a fixed membership to a markup on every sale.

4. Clover

Clover is a point-of-sale company with its own hardware, a fit for shops that want devices and POS software together. Its shop page lists the Clover Flex, Mini, Station Duo and other devices, each sold outright or paid for monthly, and Clover Go is its mobile card reader for phones. A 2023 Clover announcement brought Tap to Pay on iPhone in the Clover Go app to US small and mid-sized businesses. Its pricing page sets card rates as a percentage of each charge plus a flat fee.

Best for: shops that want their own mix of Clover devices, bought outright or paid monthly.

5. Chase

Chase sells card acceptance alongside its business banking, which makes it a simple option for owners who already bank there. It offers a POS terminal for small businesses and Tap to Pay on an iPhone or Android phone with no extra hardware, which needs a Chase Business Complete Banking account with QuickAccept activated first. Rates on its merchant fees page are flat per transaction and vary with the payment type.

Best for: Chase Business Complete Banking customers who want a terminal and phone payments tied to their bank account.

6. SumUp

SumUp sells card readers to small businesses in the US, and it suits sellers whose card volume is still small or seasonal. Its card reader comparison page describes a Standard plan with no monthly fee and a paid monthly POS Plus plan, and SumUp Invoices lets you create invoices for free.

Best for: sellers with low or seasonal card volume who want a reader on a plan with no monthly fee.

7. PayPal

PayPal sells in-person payments through PayPal Point of Sale, the new name for PayPal Zettle, and it suits a business whose customers already pay it through PayPal. Its US site sells card readers and terminals and POS software, with Tap to Pay on iPhone and on Android through the Point of Sale app. Its fees sit on a separate POS Fees page.

Best for: businesses already using PayPal that want card readers, POS software or Tap to Pay for in-person sales.

When does a Square alternative make sense?

When your business has changed and your payments setup hasn't. Look around if one of these sounds familiar:

• Your card volume has grown to the point where how the rate is built matters. On interchange-plus each card costs its own interchange plus a set markup; on a flat rate, every card in a channel pays the same percentage.
• Many customers pay by debit. Big-bank debit carries capped interchange that, on anything but the smallest tickets, sits below credit card interchange.
• You want a person who knows your account when a terminal stops working or a deposit looks short.
• You'd like to choose your POS software and your processor separately.

Staying can be the right call, too. If you run a modest number of card sales, the software does what you need and nothing has gone wrong, the savings on paper may not cover new hardware and the time it takes to retrain staff. Run the numbers before you decide.

Alternatives to Square for payment processing: what to check first

Most of the work in a switch sits outside the rate. Before you sign with any of the alternatives to Square for payment processing, get clear answers on these:

Buy hardware outright where you can. In an FTC warning about processing deals, some small businesses ended up paying thousands of dollars to lease card equipment worth a few hundred. Our guide to credit card machines for small business explains locked terminals and what to ask before you buy, and our guide to reading a merchant statement shows where each fee appears.

What does a small shop need to take cards in person?

Three things, in this order: chip, tap and encryption.

Chip comes first. EMVCo, which manages the chip standard, says a chip creates a one-time security code for each transaction (EMVCo), so every terminal you consider should read chip cards.

Then tap. Apple's developer site says over two thirds of US credit and debit cards are issued contactless-enabled (Apple), and it describes Tap to Pay on iPhone taking those cards and digital wallets with no extra hardware. For a mobile groomer or a market stall, a phone can be the whole setup.

Then encryption. PCI SSC says merchants using a PCI-listed point-to-point encryption (P2PE) solution have fewer PCI DSS requirements to meet (PCI SSC), so ask whether your provider's terminals use one.

The rest depends on how you sell: a PIN pad if many customers pay by debit, tip prompts for cafes and salons, a portable terminal for tables or curbside pickup. Our guides to what EMV is, Tap to Pay on iPhone and point-to-point encryption go deeper.

What do Square payment processing alternatives cost?

Whoever processes the sale, every card payment carries interchange to the card's issuer, network fees to the card brand and the processor's markup. Square payment processing alternatives differ in how they package those layers and how much you see.

In-person sales sit at the low end of the schedule. On Visa's US schedule effective April 18, 2026, a basic consumer credit card in its "All Other Products" group carries 1.51% plus a fixed fee when it's dipped or tapped, and a Traditional Rewards card carries 1.65% plus a fixed fee (Visa). Big-bank debit is lower still: Regulation II caps it at 21 cents plus 0.05% of the sale, plus a 1-cent fraud-prevention adjustment, for issuers with $10 billion or more in assets (Federal Reserve).

Here's a made-up example. A bike shop in Raleigh runs $30,000 a month in card sales at a $60 average ticket, so 500 sales, half on big-bank debit cards and half on basic Visa credit cards.

• Debit: 21 cents plus 0.05% of $60 (3 cents) plus the 1-cent adjustment is about 25 cents a sale, or $62.50 across 250 sales.
• Credit: 1.51% of $60 is about 91 cents, and the 10-cent fixed fee brings it to about $1.01 a sale, or $251.50 across 250 sales.
• Total interchange: $314, a little over 1% of sales.

Say the shop's statement for the month shows $840 in fees, an effective rate of 2.8%. Everything above the $314, here $526, is network fees plus the processor's margin. An interchange-plus quote lists those separately, so you know what you're negotiating over.

Small tickets change the math. A fixed fee per sale weighs far more on a $6 coffee than on a $60 tune-up, so a cafe with tiny tickets should get a real quote before assuming any pricing model wins. Our comparison of interchange-plus vs flat rate runs the numbers at four ticket sizes, and our credit card processing fees page explains each layer.

Your next step

Last month's statement is all we need for a free statement review. We'll work out your effective rate, separate interchange from markup, and show what the same month would cost on interchange-plus, fixed fees included. If Square, or another company on this list, is the better fit for your shop, the numbers will show that too. Clearo works with small businesses throughout the United States and Canada.