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4 Best Payment Apps for Small Business

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The GoCardless content team comprises a group of subject-matter experts in multiple fields from across GoCardless. The authors and reviewers work in the sales, marketing, legal, and finance departments. All have in-depth knowledge and experience in various aspects of payment scheme technology and the operating rules applicable to each. The team holds expertise in the well-established payment schemes such as UK Direct Debit, the European SEPA scheme, and the US ACH scheme, as well as in schemes operating in Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand. See full bio

Last editedNov 20223 min read

In the past few decades, the expansion of fintech solutions has changed the way that we pay for everything.

Gone are the days when you would take out physical money to pay back a friend or make a business payment, and more people are now opting for digital payments, particularly contactless ones. In order to do this, you need to have the right payment app.

There are a number of different factors to consider when you’re choosing the right payment app for a small business. These can differ in terms of the transaction fees that they charge, the security measures they have in place, ease of use and much more.

PayPal

PayPal is an extremely popular payment app for personal and business use alike, and there are plenty of valid reasons for this. However, it’s also one of the older apps on the market and comes with its share of drawbacks as a result.

Pros

The mobile application is user-friendly, and it’s easy to set up your account to make payments to individuals and other businesses.
PayPal uses strong encryption technology to keep your funds secure, making it a great option for fraud prevention.

Cons

Business users will need to pay fees to receive funds.
There are charges to consider if you need to convert currencies or use a credit card. For example, for any credit card transactions you will need to pay 2.9% plus a fixed fee, whereas international credit card transactions incur fees of 7.9% plus a fixed fee.

QuickBooks

QuickBooks is a specialist payment app for small businesses, offering you a range of features that are useful to entrepreneurs. However, while it is ideal for smaller businesses and those seeking to use lots of advanced features, for larger businesses or those that require a more straightforward platform, it might prove quite complex.

Pros

QuickBooks boasts an easy-to-use interface and intuitive features that allow you to keep track of essential business figures. For example, it automatically categorises business expenses and allows you to create both one-off and recurring invoices.
You can feel secure using QuickBooks as a business payment app, as SSL, digital certificates and RSA encryption are used to keep your information safe.
QuickBooks integrates seamlessly with GoCardless, saving hours of potential admin time if you use both platforms.

Cons

QuickBooks can be expensive and complicated to use if you opt for any of the more advanced features. Consider whether these additional features add value to your business before adding them to the baseline service.
Bugs and errors might be more common with QuickBooks than with less fully featured services.

Stripe

While it offers a similar service to PayPal, Stripe offers more in the way of customisation and is better suited to SMEs. It could be the best payment app for a small business looking to expand in the near future.

Pros

Stripe offers a range of features such as invoicing and regular billing, making it an excellent choice if you deal with recurring payments.
It also boasts extensive developer options and hundreds of third-party integrations.

Cons

While the payment system is transparent and simple, Stripe charges 2.9% for each successful card transaction, along with a small fixed-rate fee that is added to this.
Charges an additional 1% for international cards and an additional 1% if a currency conversion is required, though it offers more options for international businesses than its competitors.
More difficult to set up than PayPal.

FreshBooks

If you take a lot of payments through invoicing, then Freshbooks is the perfect small business payment app for you.

Pros

As with all the best business payment apps, FreshBooks is great for invoicing as it will automatically send your customers reminders to help avoid late payments.
With everything from cloud-based accounting and expense management to comprehensive time tracking, FreshBooks offers a wealth of features.
FreshBooks offer a free 30-day trial, so you can try it out to see whether it suits your needs before actually committing.

Cons

The app is slightly more complicated to use than others, though this is primarily due to the range of features it supports.
You will have to pay a monthly fee to use FreshBooks.

We can help

GoCardless helps you automate payment collection, cutting down on the amount of admin your team needs to deal with when chasing invoices.

It also allows businesses to collect payments directly from customer and client bank accounts and is pull-based, putting the business in greater control of all payments.

Find out how GoCardless can help you with ad hoc payments or recurring payments.