SumUp sells a card reader. You hold it, the customer taps it, you put it back in your pocket. HonestyBox prints a QR code that lives on the stall whether you are there or not.
That distinction decides almost everything else. If you stand at your stall, a reader is a fine tool and often the cheaper one. If your stall trades while you are milking, at work, or asleep, a reader cannot help you, because somebody has to be holding it.
On rate alone SumUp wins comfortably, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Our 5% sits on top of Stripe's processing fee, and SumUp's in-person rate is a single low percentage with no fixed pence.
What you are paying us for is the sale happening at all when nobody is there to hold a reader. On an attended pitch that is worth nothing to you, and you should buy the reader.
Worth being straight about this, because it is the part most comparisons get wrong: SumUp does have payment links and QR payments. It is not a reader-only company.
Two things to check before you rely on them for a gate stall. First, remote payments are charged at SumUp's higher online rate rather than the in-person rate, so the headline number you have been comparing is not the one that applies. Second, a payment link is built around an amount you have already set, which suits a fixed-price item and suits a mixed stall much less well. Test it against your actual stall before you decide either way.
Say you sell £200 a month from the gate. A reader costs you a few pounds in fees, plus the hardware once — and requires you to be standing there for every one of those sales.
HonestyBox costs you more per pound and nothing up front, and collects while you are elsewhere. The question is not which rate is lower. It is how many of those £200 would have happened at all if you had to be present.
If the answer is all of them, buy the reader.
Yes, and plenty do. A reader for market days when you are behind the table, a QR plaque on the gate for the rest of the week. They do not conflict.
We would not. It needs charging, it needs pairing to a phone, and it is a sellable object sitting unattended at the roadside. That is a different risk from a piece of engraved slate.
SumUp, on rate. The fixed 20p in Stripe's fee is what makes small transactions expensive for us, and we say so on our pricing page.
Both need connectivity. A reader needs it on your phone; a QR code needs it on the customer's. At a rural gate the customer's network is often a different one to yours, which sometimes helps.