Getting paid: set up payments

Before you can take a card payment, we need to confirm who you are and where your money should go. Start from the Set up payments card at the top of your Home dashboard.

The first time, you'll see a short intro — what you get, the rates you'll pay, and why we need identity information — and then we start asking questions.

Coming back, you skip all of that. The card reads Continue setting up payments, and it takes you straight to your checklist with everything you'd already answered still filled in. You never re-read the intro to get back to your own progress. (Want the rate card again? Press Back from the checklist.)

Your answers save as you go

You do not have to finish in one sitting. Every screen saves when you press Continue, so you can close the tab and come back to exactly where you left off. There's no final "submit everything" button to lose your work to.

Steps to enable payments

Steps to enable payments is a checklist of the sections we need from you — where the intro leads you the first time, and where the card drops you on every visit after that. Each one shows Start, or a tick and Edit once it's done. Which sections you see depends on the kind of business you are, so you're never asked for something that doesn't apply to you.

Account type

First, what kind of business you are: a sole trader or freelancer, a limited company, or a partnership or association. If you pick partnership or association we'll ask which kind, because the answer changes what we need from you afterwards.

Unincorporated partnerships are marked "Coming soon" and can't be picked yet. We're waiting on our payments partner to support that business type, and we'd rather tell you now than have you fill in the whole form and get turned down at the end. If that's you, nothing else on this page applies yet — get in touch and we'll let you know when it opens up. If you already chose it before we paused it, your answers are safe: nothing has been changed or deleted, and your account still says unincorporated partnership.

Edit on the Account type row takes you back to that first question — the one with sole trader, company and partnership on it. If you're a partnership, press Continue to reach the "which kind" question again.

Looking is free. Opening the row and pressing Continue on the answer you already gave changes nothing and clears nothing, so you can go and check what you picked without risking anything.

⚠️ Changing your account type to a different one clears the answers you gave for the old one, including any identity documents you uploaded. We warn you first and the change can't be undone — the information a sole trader gives us isn't the information we need for a company, so it can't carry over.

Your details

A sole trader gives us personal details — name, date of birth, contact details — because for a sole trader, you are the business. A company or an incorporated partnership gives us its registered name and Companies House number instead.

Your name, email and mobile are already filled in from what you gave us when you created your account, so you shouldn't need to type them again. Check them and change anything that isn't right — what's on the form when you press Continue is what we use. Your date of birth is the one thing we haven't asked you for before, so that one starts empty.

Phone numbers have to be complete UK numbers. A UK mobile is the 07… number you'd give a friend — eleven digits with the leading 0, or ten after the +44 we put in front for you. If a number is a digit short, or isn't a UK landline or mobile, the form won't accept it and Continue stays greyed out until it's fixed. It's an easy one to miss — 0756244465 looks complete but is one digit short — so we check it here rather than after you've sent everything off. Our payments partner accepts UK numbers only for these, so give a UK number even if you also have an overseas one.

Sole traders are also asked for a home address — called out in a note under the title, because this is the one people most often get wrong. It's where you live, not where the business operates. It has to match your proof of identity, which is why we ask for it separately from the business address and why it starts empty rather than copying an address you've given us for something else.

If you're a company, there's a search box at the top of that screen: start typing your company name or number, pick yours from the list, and we'll fill in the registered name and company number for you. Check them before you carry on — you can edit either one.

Two things worth knowing. Your trading name stays yours to type: Companies House only holds the registered name, so if customers know you by something else, put that in the trading name field yourself. And if the search finds nothing — or tells you it isn't available — just fill the fields in by hand. Not every organisation is on the Companies House register; a charity, for instance, may be with the Charity Commission. The search is there to save you typing, never to stop you.

We also ask for your VAT number, or, if you don't have one, why you're not registered.

When you type a VAT number we check it against HMRC's register and show you what came back — usually the business name it's registered to. That's worth a glance: if the name isn't yours, the number probably belongs to someone else, and catching it here saves a rejected application later.

It never stops you. If HMRC doesn't recognise the number, or the check isn't available at that moment, you'll see a note and you can carry straight on. HMRC's register can take a few weeks to catch up with a new registration, so a number that's too new to show up is normal — enter it and keep going.

About your business

The same section asks a few quick questions about the business itself. Like everything else, each one saves when you press Continue.

• How customers can reach you — a support email and phone number. These travel with your card payments, so they're what a customer's bank shows if there's ever a query. We fill them in from the details we already hold; check them and change anything that isn't right. The phone has to be a complete UK number, the same as above — Continue stays greyed out until it is.

• Roughly what you turn over in a year — pick the band that fits. No exact figures, no documents.

• What kind of business you run — choose the closest match from the list. Start typing to search it; the everyday hospitality choices are at the top.

• Whether you trade under a different name — if your customers know you by a name that isn't the official one, tell us here. It comes straight after your business name, so the two name questions sit together. If you've already given us a trading name earlier in setup, we don't ask twice.

• Your primary business address, and a phone number for it — this has to match the address on your business bank statement, so we call that out in a note above the fields to make it hard to miss. We fill the address in from the details you gave when you signed up; change it if it isn't right. The phone number is the one for the place your customers are served — our payments partner requires one, and Continue stays greyed out until it's a complete UK number.

• Whether you trade somewhere other than that address — if the place customers actually find you is different, say so and search for the address the same way as elsewhere in setup. You can give the phone number for that place too.

  We used to ask for "where you take payments" as a separate section, repeating an address and phone you'd just given. We don't any more: whichever of the two addresses you tell us you trade at is the one we use.

Identity documents

We're required to verify who you are, so we'll ask for a passport, driving licence or identity card. A passport is a single photo; a licence or identity card needs both the front and the back.

You can upload from the device you're on, or continue on your phone if it has a better camera. Both halves of a two-sided document have to be uploaded before that step counts as done.

Once a document is uploaded it stays uploaded — close the tab, come back tomorrow, and it's still there with the section still ticked. If you go back through the section later — for example to correct something our payments partner asked about — the document you already uploaded is left exactly as it is; only a new or replaced file is sent. Uploading a replacement swaps the old file out rather than keeping both.

Leaving a section without losing it

Close takes you back one level, it doesn't throw you out. Press it inside any section and you return to Steps to enable payments with everything you'd entered still saved. Press it on the checklist itself and you go back to your Home dashboard.

So if you open a section and realise it's not the one you meant, Close is the quick way back to the list.

Going back to re-read the intro screens is safe too. Back from the checklist returns you to the pages explaining our rates, which are there to be re-read whenever you want. Close from those pages brings you to your checklist — not out of setup — as long as you've already got that far. Nothing you've entered is affected either way.

Company representatives

Companies and incorporated partnerships get one more section: the people who own or control the business. We start by asking whether that's one person or several, then take each person's details, their home address and one identity document — the same three documents we accept for you.

We need everyone who owns 25% or more, plus at least one person who controls the company, usually a director. Their details have to match the official company registration.

On each person's details form we also ask which role they hold at the company — director, authorised signatory, owner through shares, owner through control, or partner. One person can hold several, so tick every role that applies. If they own through shares, we ask what percentage of the company they own — a plain number from 0 to 100, no share certificates needed.

When you've added someone, they appear in a list. Anyone still missing something says so on their row — including someone added before we asked about roles, whose row will say exactly that, and someone whose mobile isn't a complete UK number — and you can pick up where you left off or remove them entirely. The section only ticks once everyone on the list is complete — if you told us more than one person owns 25% or more, we'll wait for the second before it does.

Changing your answer about who owns the company can remove the people you've added. If you said more than one person owns 25% or more, added them, and then change your answer to a sole owner, we'll ask you to confirm before deleting them — because one owner and a list of several don't agree. That includes any identity documents they uploaded, so you'd need those to hand again. Going the other way is safe: switching from a sole owner to several keeps the person you've already added and simply waits for the next one.

Sole traders don't see this section at all.

Bank account and the rest

The Bank account row works differently from the others: it stays inactive until you've sent your application, and opens the moment you do. You don't have to wait for your application to be accepted first — you can tell us where your payouts should go while the checks are still running. Your payout account is added on a secure page provided by our payments partner; we never see or store your bank details, and each business has one payout account. The page will not say your payouts are live until we have finished checking that with our payments partner.

If you open that page in the first minute or so after submitting, you may see "We're setting your account up" for a moment. Nothing has gone wrong — the account your payouts attach to is still being created, and the form appears on its own as soon as it's ready. You can leave the page and come back.

You'll only ever be asked for your bank details once, in one place. Until you've added an account, the Bank account card is the only thing telling you to — there's no separate notice repeating it. If something is wrong with the details after you've added them, that comes back as its own item with its own button, so you can go straight back and fix it.

The Payment method section isn't switched on yet; its button stays greyed out until it is.

What happens next

When every section shows a tick, a Review and submit card appears at the bottom of your checklist. It doesn't repeat your answers — those are the rows above it, and you can open any of them for a last look. What it shows you is what happens after you press submit: your details go to our payments partner for verification, this page becomes your progress view, and the bank account step opens straight away so you can add your payout details while you wait.

Once you submit, your answers are locked while they're checked. That's why the review step tells you before you send, not after. Nothing is ever lost.

After you submit, the checklist becomes a progress page. It updates on its own — you don't need to keep refreshing, and you can close it and come back whenever you like.

It checks fastest when you're most likely to be watching: several times in the first few seconds after you submit, and again the moment you come back to the tab, so returning to look never leaves you staring at an old screen. Left open in the background it settles down to a check every twenty seconds and stops entirely while the tab is hidden.

That page stays on "Your application is being checked" until we have a complete answer from our payments partner. If we cannot load that answer for a moment, the page does not treat your application as finished, and it does not ask you for extra work. Come back later and it will move on by itself.

It's normal for an application to come back asking for a bit more. When our payments partner needs something, it's listed on this page in plain words, and some items can be on our side rather than yours — in which case the page says so and there's nothing you need to do. Your answers are safe either way: an application that needs more isn't rejected and doesn't start again.

Finding the section that needs a second look

The section itself tells you. When something comes back, the row on your checklist swaps its green tick for a red cross, and what our payments partner said sits underneath that row, in their words. Everything else keeps its tick, so you can see at a glance which one of your sections they're asking about rather than reading a list and guessing.

A row can carry a cross even though you filled it in — that's not a mistake on your part. It means they've looked at what you sent and want another look at it, so the button still says Edit and your answers are still there.

If they've asked about more than one thing in the same section, you'll see every one of them under that row. Fix them together — sending one at a time just means waiting for another round.

Occasionally something comes back that doesn't belong to any section — your bank account, the card security questionnaire, or the terms. Those are listed separately, under Also needed, outside the sections above, so nothing gets lost between the rows.

Very rarely a row is marked with nothing written under it. That means our payments partner has flagged something but hasn't given us wording we can pass on. We'd rather show you the cross than pretend the section is fine — get in touch and we'll find out what they need.

Changing something after you've submitted

If our payments partner asks you to look at something again, your checklist unlocks by itself — all of it, not only the part they mentioned. You'll see an Update button next to what they've asked about, and every section gets its Edit button back, so if you spot something else that's wrong while you're in there you can fix that too. Update still takes you straight to the section they asked about — that's the same row wearing the red cross.

Change what's needed, then press Send my corrections at the bottom. It goes in one go rather than saving each keystroke straight through, which is deliberate: sending piecemeal can restart checks that had already passed. And it sends only what you changed — not your whole application again — so a correction to one detail doesn't put everything else back into checking. Once it's sent, the page goes back to saying your details are being checked, because they are — a correction starts a fresh look, not an instant tick.

If our partner won't accept a correction, the page tells you what happened in their own words, and says whether any of your other corrections did go through.

When our partner is happy, your sections lock again on their own. If something needs correcting and nothing has been asked about, contact support and we'll sort it with you.

Two last confirmations

Even after your application is accepted, there are two things only you can do, and payments stay switched off until both are done. They appear on the same progress page:

• A card security questionnaire. A short set of statements about how your business handles card details. You read it on the page and confirm.
• Accepting the terms. Our payments partner's terms of service — sometimes one document, sometimes two. Read them on the page and accept.

Both are shown in full before there's anything to press. If we can't load a document, we won't ask you to agree to it — you'll see a message and can try again in a moment.

Each of these has three states on the progress page. Before you've done it, there's a button. After you press confirm or accept, the row shows a spinner while our partner records it — that can take a little while, and you don't need to do anything. Once it's recorded, the row shows a tick, and there's nothing left to press.

Stuck on a step, or think you've been asked for the wrong thing? Get in touch and we'll take a look with you.