Best card reader for personal trainers
Most personal trainers take payment somewhere between sessions — a park, a client's home, a gym floor — so a compact, phone-paired reader usually beats a countertop terminal. Whether you charge per session or sell blocks of sessions upfront changes which payment tool fits best, not just which reader is cheapest.
Best choice: Lopay
For pay-per-session clients, Lopay's 0.79-0.99% rate is the cheapest of the mainstream options, with no monthly fee — ideal if your income is a series of individual session payments rather than upfront packages.
Best alternative: SumUp
If you sell blocks of sessions or monthly packages upfront, SumUp's Invoices Plus add-on (£8/month) makes it easy to bill a client for 10 sessions in one go rather than tapping a card ten separate times.
What a personal trainer's card takings usually look like
Session rates for UK personal trainers commonly fall in the £30-£55 range depending on location and specialism, with many full-time trainers running around 80 sessions a month across their client base. At that volume, even a small difference in percentage rate adds up meaningfully over a year — worth checking against the cost example below.
| Provider | Best for | Card fee | Contract |
|---|---|---|---|
LoLopay | Pay-per-session, lowest fees | 0.79-0.99% | None |
SuSumUp | Package/block invoicing | 1.69% | None |
ZeZettle | Already using PayPal elsewhere | 1.75% | None |
Beyond the headline rate
Compact and portable
A small Bluetooth reader that fits in a gym bag or pocket suits trainers moving between parks, clients' homes and gym floors far better than a countertop terminal.
Package and block bookings
Selling sessions in blocks of 5, 10 or 20 is common in this trade — an invoicing add-on (SumUp) or Xero integration (Lopay) lets you bill for the whole block rather than taking payment session by session.
Recurring monthly memberships
If you run an ongoing monthly membership model rather than pay-per-session, a Direct Debit tool like GoCardless can reduce the admin and missed-payment risk of manually taking a card payment every month.
Working without wifi
Outdoor sessions in parks rely on your phone's mobile signal for a Bluetooth-paired reader — check coverage at your usual training spots before committing to a phone-dependent device.
A personal trainer taking £3,200/month in card payments
At an average session rate of £40 (80 sessions/month):
| Lopay Standard (0.99%) | £31.68/month |
| SumUp (1.69%) | £54.08/month |
| Zettle (1.75%) | £56.00/month |
The roughly £22/month gap between Lopay and SumUp adds up to over £260 a year — worth the switch unless SumUp's invoicing add-on is doing genuine work for your package sales.
Frequently asked questions
What's the best card reader for a personal trainer?
Lopay for the lowest fees on pay-per-session work; SumUp as the alternative if you regularly invoice for blocks of sessions upfront.
Can I sell a block of sessions in advance?
Yes — SumUp's Invoices Plus and Lopay's Xero integration both support billing a package upfront rather than taking payment session by session.
Compare the full card reader market
See every provider side by side with our live cost calculator.
Methodology: Pricing pulled directly from lopay.com, sumup.com and zettle.com official UK pricing pages on 30 July 2026. Typical session rates and monthly session counts are directional industry estimates, not an independent survey. See our Editorial Policy.