Viva.comC64
Payment Processor · Small and medium businesses trading in Europe or the UK that want card acceptance and a business account fr…
Overview
$44
Best for: Small and medium businesses trading in Europe or the UK that want card acceptance and a business account from the same licensed provider, and that value being able to read the price before they buy. It fits multi-country sellers especially well, because Viva does local acquiring and local-currency settlement across its footprint rather than routing everything through one market, and it suits businesses with a low average transaction value, where the 1p minimum fee on card-present beats the fixed pence charge most competitors add to every sale.
Strengths
- + It publishes a complete price pack per country — acquiring rate, interchange and scheme pass-throughs, plan fees, dispute fees and penalty charges — with an effective date on the page. Almost nothing else in European acquiring does this.
- + The 1p minimum fee on card-present transactions is genuinely cheap for low-ticket businesses. Most competitors add a fixed charge of several pence to every sale, which hurts hardest on small baskets.
- + It holds its own licences — a Greek banking licence acquired with Praxia Bank in 2020 and an e-money licence from the Bank of Greece — so the merchant agreement sits with the entity that also holds the money, not with a reseller in front of someone else's acquiring.
- + Real-time settlement is included on every paid plan rather than sold as an upgrade, which is unusual: most providers treat faster access to your own money as a billable feature.
- + Genuine multi-country coverage with local acquiring and local-currency settlement across 29 European countries, including all 27 EU members plus the UK and Norway, which matters for a seller trading across borders.
- + Acceptance runs on an ordinary Android phone through the Terminal app, so a business can start taking cards without buying hardware.
Trade-offs
- – Merchant feedback is sharply polarised rather than middling. The 3.8 Trustpilot average across about 2,000 reviews is built from 64% five-star and 27% one-star ratings, and an average hides that shape.
- – The one-star reviews cluster on the same complaints: balances frozen, accounts closed, and chargebacks lost with a short notification and no reasoning. These are the failures that cost a business real money.
- – The published schedule includes some punitive line items — a £350 merchant breach fee where fraud is verified, £250 to investigate an account, £20 per transaction investigated, and £159.99 per confiscation.
- – The real cost is not one number. An acquiring rate, a monthly plan, per-item charges above plan limits, per-user charges and scheme pass-throughs on commercial and international cards all stack, and working out the true blended rate takes effort.
- – Support is tiered and the cheapest tier is an AI chat agent. Human chat costs £3.99 a month and scheduled calls or video £15.99 — so the route to a person is a paid upgrade.
- – Ownership has been contested in public. J.P. Morgan and the founders' vehicle WeRealize litigated in the English High Court from February 2024, with a ruling in June 2024 and further claims filed in January 2025; the group's long-term control is not a settled question.
Fees in detail
- Online rate: 2.19% + 24p for UK consumer cards
- International: UK commercial, European and international cards are 1.16% plus interchange and scheme fees passed through; American Express is 2.65%, plus 0
- Disputes: £20 per lost transaction. A £350 merchant breach fee applies where fraudulent activity is verified, and account or card investigations are c
Standard published rate for a domestic online card payment. Confirm current pricing on Viva.com's pricing page.
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