Business

Best Recurring Payment Apps for Small Businesses

Saim Jalees

13.07.26

Read time 9 minutes

Manually chasing repeat payments can turn predictable revenue into a monthly admin job. For UK small businesses, the right recurring payment app should make billing easier, reduce failed payments, and keep fees clear enough to plan around.

In this guide, we've compared recurring payment apps for UK small businesses, including PayPal Subscriptions, Chargebee, Adyen, Opayo, Paddle and Recurly. We look at features, fees, best-fit use cases and points to check before choosing.

We've also explained how Wise Business can help with the other side of recurring payments: paying overseas suppliers, contractors and software vendors when regular costs fall due.

Summary of providers

Provider	Summary
PayPal	A familiar, quick-start recurring payment option for small businesses. PayPal lists UK domestic all other commercial transactions at 2.9% + fixed fee, with a 0.30 GBP fixed fee for GBP commercial transactions.³
Chargebee	Built for SaaS and subscription businesses that need plan management, dunning and billing automation. Chargebee lists Starter as free for the first 200,000 GBP of cumulative billing, then 0.75% on billing.⁵
Adyen	A payments platform for larger or more technical businesses selling across markets and payment methods. Adyen lists a 0.11 GBP processing fee plus payment-method fee, with no setup or monthly fees.⁸
Opayo	A practical fit for UK businesses already using Sage Accounting or Sage 50 workflows. Elavon's Always Open page lists a 25 GBP monthly gateway fee, from 0.99% transaction fee, 350 free transactions and no joining fee.¹²
Paddle	A merchant-of-record option for SaaS and software businesses. Paddle lists 5% + 50 cents per Checkout transaction, with payments, billing and tax compliance included.¹⁴
Recurly	A subscription management platform for scaling recurring-revenue businesses. Recurly lists Starter at 249 USD per month + 0.9% of billing volume, with the first 40,000 USD of billings included each month.¹⁶

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PayPal

PayPal offers PayPal Subscriptions, which lets businesses set up recurring billing plans through a PayPal Business account. PayPal says subscription payments are built into PayPal Checkout and Expanded Checkout, and that businesses can choose a pricing model, define the billing cycle and add a one-time setup fee.²

PayPal may suit small businesses that want a recognisable checkout option without adopting a full subscription management platform. The trade-off is that its fees can become less attractive as volume, international sales or currency conversion needs grow.

Features

Feature	Notes
Subscription setup	PayPal says businesses can set recurring payment pricing models and billing cycles, and add a one-time setup fee.²
Checkout familiarity	PayPal says more than 430 million active accounts across 200+ markets use PayPal.²
Reporting	PayPal says sales are included in PayPal activity reports, with real-time insights and KPI tracking in the dashboard.²

Fees

Fee type	Notes
Domestic commercial transaction	PayPal lists all other commercial transactions at 2.9% + fixed fee, with a 0.30 GBP fixed fee for GBP.³
International transactions	PayPal lists international commercial transactions as the domestic commercial or QR code fee plus 1.29% for EEA sender markets and 1.99% for all other sender markets.³
Currency conversion	PayPal lists business-account balance conversion and receiver-borne conversion at 3% above the base exchange rate.³

Chargebee

Chargebee is a subscription billing and revenue management platform for businesses that need more than a basic payment button. It supports different billing models, dunning, payment-gateway integrations, reporting and accounting connections.

It is likely to make most sense once a business needs to manage plans, trials, upgrades, usage-based billing or failed-payment recovery at scale.

Features

Feature	Notes
Subscription management	Chargebee says it handles subscription lifecycle work including signup, billing, renewals, upgrades, downgrades, payment recovery and cancellations.⁴
Payment gateways	Chargebee's pricing page lists 35+ payment gateway integrations, including Adyen, GoCardless, Stripe, Braintree and PayPal Commerce.⁵
Dunning and failed payments	Chargebee says configurable dunning sequences and smart retry logic can run across 30+ payment gateways.⁴

Fees

Fee type	Notes
Starter	Chargebee lists Starter as free for the first 200,000 GBP of cumulative billing, then 0.75% on billing.⁵
Performance	Chargebee lists Performance at 5,988 GBP per year, billed monthly, for up to 80,000 GBP billing per month.⁵
Enterprise	Chargebee says Enterprise pricing is quoted to the business's needs.⁵

Adyen

Adyen is a payments platform for businesses that need recurring billing across different markets and payment methods. Its subscription page focuses on customer sign-up, renewal and recovery, including payment methods customers know, card-detail updates and smart retries for failed transactions.⁶

For small businesses, Adyen may be more technical than a plug-and-play subscription app. It can be a better fit for businesses with development support, international sales and the need to manage many payment methods through one integration.

Features

Feature	Notes
Recurring payments	Adyen says its subscription tools help businesses make sign-up easier, keep subscription services running and retry failed transactions.⁶
Payment methods	Adyen says UK ecommerce is card-heavy, with 90% using cards for ecommerce payments, and also lists methods such as PayPal, Bacs Direct Debit, Apple Pay, Klarna and open banking/Pay by Bank for the UK.⁹
Failed-payment recovery	Adyen says its Auto Rescue feature automatically retries declined shopper-not-present transactions such as subscription renewals.⁷

Fees

Fee type	Notes
Processing fee	Adyen lists a 0.11 GBP processing fee plus a payment-method fee.⁸
Card payments	Adyen lists Visa and Mastercard at 0.11 GBP + Interchange+ + 0.60%.⁸
Bacs Direct Debit	Adyen lists Bacs Direct Debit for the UK at 0.11 GBP + 0.55 GBP.⁸

Opayo

Opayo is the name used after Elavon acquired Sage Pay. Elavon says Sage Pay became Opayo after the acquisition, with the rebrand focused on payment and ecommerce solutions for SMEs.¹⁰

Opayo can be a practical option for UK businesses already using Sage Accounting or Sage 50-style workflows. Sage's Opayo integration page says Opayo can link to Accounting, add Pay Now buttons to invoices and import Opayo transactions into Accounting.¹¹

Features

Feature	Notes
Sage Accounting connection	Sage says Opayo can link to Accounting, support Pay Now buttons on invoices and import Opayo transactions into Accounting.¹¹
Sage 50 reconciliation	Elavon says the MyOpayo Download wizard lets businesses pull Opayo transactions into Sage 50c Accounts software and assign them to bank accounts for reconciliation.¹⁷
Online, phone and mail payments	Elavon's Always Open page says Opayo can take secure card payments on a website or over the phone, and lists online, phone and mail payments.¹²

Fees

Fee type	Notes
Always Open	Elavon lists Always Open at a 25 GBP monthly gateway fee.¹²
Transaction fee	Elavon lists from 0.99% transaction fee, subject to card turnover.¹²
Included transactions	Elavon lists 350 free transactions and no joining fee.¹²

Paddle

Paddle is a merchant-of-record platform for digital product businesses. Paddle says it manages payments, tax, compliance and billing across 300+ markets, which can be useful for SaaS and software businesses selling internationally.¹³

Because Paddle acts as merchant of record, it is different from a standard payment processor. The fee may look higher than simple card processing, but it includes support for tax and compliance work that some software businesses would otherwise need to manage separately.

Features

Feature	Notes
Merchant of record	Paddle says it manages payments, tax, compliance and billing for digital product businesses across 300+ markets.¹³
Subscriptions	Paddle says its pricing includes subscriptions, payments, tax and compliance, reporting, customer support and billing support.¹⁴
Failed-payment recovery	Paddle says its Retain product automatically recovers failed payments, reduces cancellations and optimises subscriptions.¹³

Fees

Fee type	Notes
Pay as you go	Paddle lists 5% + 50 cents per Checkout transaction.¹⁴
Included costs	Paddle says its pricing has no migration fees, monthly fees or hidden extras.¹⁴
Custom pricing	Paddle says custom pricing is available for rapidly scaling and established large-scale businesses.¹⁴

Recurly

Recurly is a subscription management platform built for recurring revenue businesses. Recurly says it has 15+ years of subscription expertise and supports subscription management, churn reduction, payment recovery, revenue recognition and integrations.¹⁵

It is likely to be most relevant for businesses where subscriptions are central to the operating model, rather than a small add-on to occasional sales.

Features

Feature	Notes
Subscription lifecycle	Recurly says it helps businesses launch plans, optimise checkout flows, connect across their tech stack and manage subscriptions.¹⁵
Retention tools	Recurly says it uses tools such as cancel flows, win-back offers and intelligent retry logic to retain customers.¹⁵
Scale	Recurly lists 100M+ active platform subscribers, 77M+ subscription renewal events and 140+ currencies accepted.¹⁵

Fees

Fee type	Notes
Starter	Recurly lists Starter at 249 USD per month + 0.9% of billing volume, with the first 40,000 USD of billings included each month.¹⁶
Trial	Recurly's pricing page describes a 90-day free trial for Starter.¹⁶
All-Access	Recurly lists All-Access for businesses ready for scale, with a 1M USD billing-volume minimum and annual billing.¹⁶

💡 With Wise Business, businesses paying recurring overseas invoices can send money to 140+ countries, convert at the mid-market exchange rate and see fees upfront.

Wise Business offers a free Essential plan for basic spending and transferring. If you need to receive money, set up direct debits, or generate invoices, you'll pay a one-time £50 setup fee to unlock the Advanced features.

Simplify paying recurring overseas bills with Wise Business

Recurring payment apps can help you collect regular customer payments. Wise Business can help with regular international outgoings, such as paying overseas suppliers, contractors or software vendors.

With Wise Business, you can:

🌍 Send money to 70+ countries at the mid-market exchange rate with low, transparent fees and no hidden exchange rate markups (product availability varies by region)
📥 Receive payments in 24 currencies and counting
💵 Get local account details for 8+ currencies, including USD and EUR, to let your customers pay in a currency they know and trust - convenience for them and peace of mind for you
💰 Hold money in 40+ currencies
🔁 Convert currencies anytime at the mid-market exchange rate with low, transparent fees
⚡ Use the batch payments tool to create and send up to 1,000 payments in a single transfer
👥 Run payroll and make international payments for up to 1,000 employees all over the world - including paying suppliers using local payment methods like ACH, SEPA, and Faster Payments
💳 Get business debit cards with 0.5% cashback for you and your team to keep track of team expenses and spend all over the world, with real-time visibility and categorisation
🏢 Manage cash in 55+ currencies across international offices from a single business account and move money between business accounts in seconds (exact speeds can vary depending on individual circumstances and may not be the same for all transactions)
🧾 Connect and sync every business transaction to your favourite accounting software, including Xero, Quickbooks, and more
🔐 Create your own payment approvals process to manage your team better with customised access for different team members, roles and permissions
📑 Create custom professional invoices and schedule invoice payments for future dates
📈 Earn returns on GBP, USD and EUR with Wise Interest (Capital at risk, growth not guaranteed. Your money is at risk if governments default or interest rates go negative. Visit Wise Interest to find out more)
🔗 Create payment links and QR codes to get paid easily (Card payment acceptance for new Wise Business customers is currently unavailable. Payment methods subject to eligibility and availability.)
⚙️ Automate payouts with the Wise API (comes with 24/7 customer support, a sandbox account to test integrations, API tokens, and clear documents on how to implement and make the most of our API)

Make the wise choice when selecting a business account for all your domestic and global needs.

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FAQs

How do you choose a recurring payment app?

Start with how you sell. A local fitness studio, membership club or sole trader may need a simple recurring card or PayPal option, while a SaaS company may need upgrades, downgrades, usage-based billing, tax handling and dunning.

Then compare total cost, not just headline fees. Check transaction fees, monthly platform fees, cross-border costs, currency conversion, chargebacks, failed-payment tools, integration work and the cost of finance admin.

For UK customers, also think about whether recurring card payments or Direct Debit is a better fit. The FCA says recurring card payments let businesses charge a payment card on a recurring basis without getting permission each time, while Direct Debit uses the customer's bank account details and permission to take money, usually on an agreed schedule.¹

What is the difference between recurring card payments and Direct Debit?

The FCA says recurring card payments, also called continuous payment authorities, let businesses charge a customer's payment card on a recurring basis. The customer gives card details rather than bank account details.¹

Direct Debit is different because the customer gives bank account details and permission for a business to take money from the account, usually on an agreed schedule.¹

What are the fees for recurring payment apps in the UK?

Fees vary by provider. PayPal lists UK commercial transactions at 2.9% + fixed fee for all other commercial transactions.³ Chargebee lists Starter as free for the first 200,000 GBP of cumulative billing, then 0.75% on billing.⁵

Adyen lists a 0.11 GBP processing fee plus payment-method fee.⁸ Paddle lists 5% + 50 cents per Checkout transaction.¹⁴ Recurly lists Starter at 249 USD per month + 0.9% of billing volume.¹⁶

How can small businesses reduce failed recurring payments?

Look for payment-retry and dunning tools. Chargebee says it offers configurable dunning sequences and smart retry logic across 30+ payment gateways.⁴ Recurly says it uses intelligent retry logic, cancel flows and win-back offers to keep customers longer.¹⁵

For card-based payments, the FCA also notes that recurring card payments may continue when a customer gets a new payment card, but this is not always the case.¹

Which recurring payment app is best for a small UK business?

There is no single best option for every business. PayPal may suit businesses that want quick setup and customer familiarity. Chargebee or Recurly may suit subscription-first businesses that need lifecycle management.

Paddle may suit SaaS businesses that want merchant-of-record support for global tax and compliance. Opayo may suit Sage users, while Adyen may suit larger or more technical businesses selling across many payment methods.

Sources:

Sources last checked on 13 July 2026

*Please see terms of use and product availability for your region or visit Wise fees and pricing for the most up to date pricing and fee information.

This publication is provided for general information purposes and does not constitute legal, tax or other professional advice from Wise Payments Limited or its subsidiaries and its affiliates, and it is not intended as a substitute for obtaining advice from a financial advisor or any other professional.

We make no representations, warranties or guarantees, whether expressed or implied, that the content in the publication is accurate, complete or up to date.