Adyen Payments is a small business payment gateway, designed to offer online payments for eCommerce, web shops, and contractors. The solution offers a seamless and cost-effective way to accept payments online. In addition, it’s primarily aimed at small-to-medium businesses, although it scales to enterprise as well.
While Adyen stands out as a cost-effective payment gateway solution, it’s not the only option. In this review, we’ll look at pricing, features, and benefits, to help you decide if Adyen is the right choice for your small business.
What Is Adyen Payments?
Adyen Payments is the online payment gateway offering delivered by Dutch payment company Adyen. The company’s platform offers an all-in-one payment solution.
It also has a status as an acquiring bank, meaning that you can process and accept payments from cards, digital wallets, and more with one payment solution.
Adyen Benefits For Small Business
Adyen Payments is a great fit for small business users. Here, it stands out with no monthly or setup fees.
In addition, it scales as much as your business does, making it a perfect fit for startups and scaleups looking to grow.
- No monthly fees
- Accept most major payment methods globally with one payment integration
- Free to set up and use
- Synchronize payments across every channel you sell on
- Insights and analytics
- Scales as much as your business does
- Risk management tools to reduce chargebacks and fraud
Adyen Features & Offerings
Adyen is a full-service payment platform. That means you can handle every aspect of post-checkout with one platform.
Payment Types
Adyen accepts all major payment types including:
- Credit Cards like MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover, Diners Club, JCB, UnionPay, and more
- Bank Transfers with iDeal, Sofort, Bancontact, Giropay, EPS, and more
- Real time payments with PIX, SEPA, and more
- Payment Vouchers and Gift Cards
- Digital Wallets like Google Pay, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, etc.
- Mobile Payments
- Afterpay and credit solutions like Klarna, Affirm, etc.
Optimize Checkout
Reduce churn with optimizations to automatically improve the payment process:
- Language localization
- Location-based payment options
- Credentials
- Card detection and verification
- Responsive to devices
- Custom error messages
Payment Processing
Unlike some competitors, Adyen can handle the full settlement of payments.
This means you’ll only need one platform to accept and process payments to transfer them to your bank.
Recurring Payments
You can set up subscriptions and recurring payments, ideal for SaaS, streaming, memberships, and other solutions, with automatic billing available for your customers.
Plugins
You don’t have to know how to code to start using Adyen. Instead, it offers plugins for most major eCommerce websites and website developers. That means you can add Adyen payment processing with a few clicks, sign in, and you’re ready to go.
Alternatively, you can still use the API if you prefer something custom.
Central Platform
Adyen offers a central platform to manage security, fraud, and risk.
That makes it easier to stay on top of security and potential charges, because everything is in one place.
Adyen Pricing & Fees
Adyen stands out from many competitors because it doesn’t charge monthly fees or setup fees. Instead, you can get started and pay nothing but a simple transaction fee. For most UK cards, that’s about 11p per card, plus the fee from the associated payment method.
In 2025, those rates are:
- 3.95% for American Express
- 55p for BACS Direct Debit
- 4.19% + 30p for ClearPay
- 0.80% + 25p=3.95% for Amazon Pay
- 3.95% for Diners and Discover Cards
- 3.75% for JCB
- 4.99% + 20p for Klarna Pay Over Time and 2.90% + 20p for Klarna Pay Later
- Interchange + + 0.60% for Mastercard and Maestro
- 50p for direct bank payments
- 10-12% for PaySafe cards
- Interchange + + 0.60% for Visa
- 3% for most other cards
This means you won’t pay a flat fee per card. Instead, you’ll have a different rate depending on the card your customers pay with. This does mean you pay for what you’re using.
On the other hand, it can mean fees are less predictable than they would be with a competitor using a flat-rate charge.
As your account grows, you can also negotiate custom rates with Adyen. For example, some rates like PayPal are negotiated on a custom basis per user.
Additional Costs & Charges
You’ll occasionally see fees for chargebacks and returns. In addition, you can pay extra for platform tools like fraud prevention.
However, there are no other additional charges, which may be peace of mind over a big bank.
Adyen vs Competitors
Adyen is an integrated payment processor and payment gateway. It’s ideal for small businesses and startups because you only need one platform. That makes its closest competitors other integrated payment gateways like Stripe, Mollie, PayPal, WorldPay, FiServe, Tyl by NatWest, and Square.
Let’s take a look at how Adyen compares to its competitors:
| Provider | Adyen | Stripe | Mollie | PayPal | FiServe | Tyl by NatWest | Square | WorldPay |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly Fee | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0-£10 | £14.95 | £0-£29+ | £2.95-£25+ |
| Transaction Cost | 11p + Provider Cost (typically 3%) | 2.5% + 25p for UK Card, 1.5% + 25p for EU cards | 1.80%-3.25% + 25p | 1.2% -3.5% + fixed fee | 1.2%- £3.95% + fixed fee | 1.39% + 5p or 1.99% + 5p | 1.4%+ 25p or 2.5% + 25p | 1.4%-3.95% + fixed rate |
| Payments Accepted | All major cards | All major cards | Major EU + UK | All major | All major | All major cards and digital wallets | All major Western cards and digital wallets | All major cards |
| Native Checkout | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Ease of Integration | High | Medium | High | High | Low | Low | High | Low |
Here, it’s important to note that getting the best rate on your payment gateway can mean opting for a larger bank. However, small business solutions like Adyen and Stripe can be extremely competitive, especially as they don’t have monthly fees.
Adyen Reviews & Reputation
Adyen Payments is one of the largest online payment gateways out there. It’s also one of the few non-bank options that has a banking license. That means you can use it to accept, process, and refund payments globally.
Reviews
Not everyone is happy with Adyen. Customers cite not being able to set up accounts, slow customer service, and mistaken fraud flags.
However, there are plenty of great reviews of Adyen and, as of 2025, over 120,000 companies using Adyen to process their payments.
Pricing
Adyen doesn’t charge monthly fees. Customers cite lower rates compared to big banks that charge higher fees.
However, you won’t be able to benefit from negotiated rates until your transaction volume is quite high.
Integration
With no-code, click-to-integrate, and code options, Adyen is one of the easiest payment gateways to integrate.
In addition, you can fully brand the gateway to your business, which is an advantage over gateways like PayPal.
Customer Support
Once you’re a customer, you usually get fast customer support.
Reviews quote fast and reliable service, as well as speedy replies from technical support.
Onboarding
Setting up an account with Adyen is extremely easy.
In most cases, all you have to do is create an account, integrate with API or a plugin, and then wait a few days for Adyen to verify your business identity. Normally you can start accepting payments in just a few days. That’s much faster than big banks, which can sometimes take over two weeks for the same.
Overall, Adyen’s reputation is very good. However, it does have negative reviews online, which happens because people who have something to complain about are more likely to leave a review.
Which Businesses Are The Best Fit For Adyen Payments?
Adyen Payments is a great fit for small business, mid-size business, and it serves some of the largest eCommerce and SaaS companies out there. Consider Adyen a best-fit if you’re a:
- SaaS or Subscription startup/scaleup
- Startup or scaleup looking for a payment solution to scale with your business
- Multi-channel eCommerce store looking for an omnichannel payment gateway
You might want a different payment gateway if you’re a:
- Microbusiness with a permanent low-transaction volume
- Retail or food service solution with primarily a physical store
- Startup looking for extremely predictable costs
If any of the latter apply to you, you might want to look at some of the alternatives we compared, such as Square, Stripe, or PayPal.
Adyen stands out with global payments, a unified payment processor, and scalability. If you’re a micro, local, or physical-only store, it has much less to offer.
Choosing A Small Business Payment Gateway
Choosing the right small business payment gateway can require research. After all, there are over a dozen options available on the UK market.
Adyen offers an all-in-one payment gateway. You don’t need anything else but a bank account. In addition, you can accept payments globally. Plus, Adyen only charges 11p plus actual card transaction fees. In addition, with easy integration, strong fraud prevention and security tools, and scalability, Adyen stands out as one of the best payment gateways out there.
Still not sure if it’s for you? Use the form at the bottom of the page to request quotes from top payment gateways and we’ll compare options for you and send you the best fits for your needs.