Blog · 12 May 2026
Why we built Seamless Payments
The card payments market is set up to confuse hospitality operators. Comparison sites paid by one or two providers don't fix that. Here's what we're trying to do differently.
Paul Walton
Founder, CardRate
Most hospitality operators I've spoken to don't actually know what they're paying their card processor. They know the number on the invoice. They don't know whether it's good. They don't know what they'd pay somewhere else, because every provider quotes differently and every comparison site is paid to push one or two of them.
That's a market failure, not a hard technical problem.
What we earn, and how
Seamless Payments earns a commission from every provider listed on this site. That's the trick: because we're paid by everyone, we have no reason to push one over another. Recommending the wrong provider for your business loses us a customer and earns us a worse one. Recommending the right one is the strategy.
How the wizard ranks
Total monthly cost at your volume, then settlement speed, then contract length. Commission size is not in the formula and never will be. The full algorithm lives in source control — see our methodology page.
What's next
We're starting with the eight providers we know best for UK hospitality. We'll add more as we have rates we trust. If you spot a rate that's wrong, tell us — we re-verify quarterly but the world moves faster than that.
Paul Walton
Founder, CardRate
Paul founded CardRate after years building hospitality tech at Seamless POS Ltd. He writes here about UK card payment pricing, contracts, and the comparison market — and only about things he'd recommend a friend's pub.