Opayo UK: What It Costs and How It Compares to Rivals

Opayo is a UK payment gateway formerly known as Sage Pay, now owned by Elavon (a subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp). It processes online, phone and in-person card payments for UK businesses, charging gateway subscription fees from around £25 per month plus a separate card processing rate through your acquiring bank. Opayo suits established UK businesses needing a reliable, PCI-compliant gateway with built-in fraud screening, though its two-layer pricing structure makes total cost comparisons harder than with all-in-one providers such as Stripe or Square.

Key Facts: Opayo UK

Updated August 2026

Who Is This Page For?

This page is for UK business owners and finance managers researching Opayo as a payment gateway option. It covers what Opayo is, how it works, what it costs, and how it compares to alternatives such as Stripe and Elavon's own direct merchant services. It is also useful for anyone who knew the service as Sage Pay and wants to understand what changed after the 2020 rebrand.

Who Is Opayo For?

Opayo is a strong fit for UK small and medium-sized businesses that sell online and want a payment gateway with a long track record in the UK market. Its reputation was built on reliability and ease of integration. Many UK ecommerce platforms support Opayo natively, including WooCommerce, Magento and OpenCart. If your developer has worked with UK payment gateways before, they will almost certainly know Opayo.

It also works for businesses taking telephone and mail order payments, known as MOTO transactions. Opayo's virtual terminal lets you key in card details manually, which suits trades, consultancies and service businesses that invoice clients directly. The fraud screening tools are more thorough than many entry-level gateways, making it a reasonable choice for sectors where chargebacks are a concern.

Very high-volume merchants processing more than £1 million a year will likely find the pricing model less attractive than negotiating interchange-plus rates with a dedicated acquirer. Likewise, if you need a single provider for both the gateway and card machine terminals, you will need to pair Opayo with a separate acquirer, which adds complexity. Read our guide to the difference between a payment gateway and a merchant account if you are unsure which you need.

What Is Opayo? The Sage Pay Connection Explained

Opayo is the trading name of the payment gateway previously known as Sage Pay. Sage Group plc originally built the service and launched it in 2001. Elavon acquired the business and rebranded it as Opayo in 2020. The underlying technology, UK client base and MySagePay management portal all carried over from the Sage Pay era, so existing merchants at the time of rebrand were migrated automatically.

Opayo operates under Elavon Financial Services DAC, which is authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland and registered with the UK's Financial Conduct Authority under firm reference number 671513. The official domains for the service are opayo.com and opayo.co.uk. Any website claiming to be Opayo on a different domain should be treated with caution.

Elavon itself is a major global acquirer. It processed more than six billion transactions annually as of its most recent published figures. That scale gives Opayo a stable infrastructure foundation, though it does not automatically translate into the best pricing for UK SMEs.

Is Opayo Safe and Legitimate?

Opayo is a legitimate, FCA-regulated payment gateway with a 25-year operating history in the UK under its original Sage Pay brand. It is owned by Elavon, which is in turn owned by U.S. Bancorp, one of the largest financial institutions in the United States. Merchants do not need to question whether Opayo by Elavon is a real company. It is a well-established processor with a substantial UK merchant base.

On the security side, Opayo supports PCI DSS Level 1 compliance, which is the highest level of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. Its hosted payment page keeps cardholder data off your own servers entirely. The built-in 3D Secure 2 (3DS2) authentication meets the UK's Strong Customer Authentication requirements under the FCA's Payment Services Regulations. Fraud screening tools including velocity checks and AVS/CV2 matching are included in all gateway plans at no extra charge.

Opayo's Trustpilot rating sits at around 3.9 out of 5 based on several thousand reviews as of August 2026. Positive reviews typically cite reliable uptime and ease of integration. Negative reviews most commonly mention slow customer support response times and difficulty resolving billing queries. This pattern is consistent with what we see from UK merchants who contact Compare Card Fees about their Opayo experience.

Opayo Ownership: Elavon, Sage Pay and Official Domains

Opayo is wholly owned by Elavon Inc., which is a subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp. The chain of ownership runs: U.S. Bancorp owns Elavon Inc., which operates Elavon Financial Services DAC as its European entity, which in turn owns and operates the Opayo payment gateway in the UK and Ireland.

The Sage Pay name was used from 2001 until 2020. Sage Group plc sold the payment gateway business to Elavon in a transaction completed in 2017. The Sage Pay brand was retained until 2020, when Elavon completed the full rebrand to Opayo. The current official website is opayo.com. The domain opayo.co.uk also belongs to the same business and redirects accordingly.

If you are searching for "Opayo corporate ownership" or trying to verify whether a payment request from Opayo is genuine, the key checks are: look for the FCA firm reference number 671513, confirm the domain is opayo.com or opayo.co.uk, and verify that the acquiring entity is Elavon Financial Services DAC.

Opayo Features

• Hosted payment page: Opayo hosts the card entry page on its own secure servers, which removes much of your PCI DSS burden and keeps sensitive card data off your own systems.
• MOTO virtual terminal: A browser-based terminal lets you take card payments over the phone or by post without additional hardware. Useful for service businesses and trade suppliers. See our full guide to MOTO payments for UK businesses.
• Fraud screening suite: Opayo includes a built-in fraud screening tool that checks transactions against rules you set, such as velocity checks and AVS/CV2 matching, before they reach authorisation.
• 3D Secure 2 (3DS2): Opayo supports 3D Secure 2 authentication, required under the UK's Strong Customer Authentication rules. This reduces fraud liability for eligible transactions. Our guide to 3D Secure and Strong Customer Authentication covers what this means in practice.
• Tokenisation and repeat billing: Card tokens allow returning customers to pay without re-entering their details. Subscriptions and repeat billing can be set up for recurring revenue businesses.
• Reporting dashboard: The MySagePay portal (still used under the Opayo brand) gives transaction-level reporting, refund management and fraud alert monitoring from a single login.
• Multi-currency support: Opayo can process payments in multiple currencies, which is useful for UK businesses selling to overseas customers online.
• Wide platform integrations: Pre-built plugins are available for WooCommerce, Magento, PrestaShop and OpenCart, cutting development time for standard ecommerce setups. See our guide to payment gateway integrations for UK ecommerce platforms.

Opayo Fees and Pricing

Opayo publishes gateway subscription plans based on monthly transaction volumes rather than a single flat rate for all merchants. The pricing structure below reflects publicly available information as of August 2026. Always request a written quote before signing, as rates can vary.

The gateway subscription fee is separate from the card processing rate charged by your acquiring bank. If you use Opayo with an Elavon merchant account, processing fees are typically quoted as a blended percentage rate on top of the gateway cost. Interchange-plus pricing is available for larger merchants but is not the default offer for most SMEs. Our guide to interchange-plus versus blended pricing explains the difference and when it is worth pushing for.

Additional costs include a PCI DSS compliance fee (typically around £20–£30 per year if managed through Elavon), and potential charges for chargebacks. MOTO transactions generally attract a higher processing rate than standard card-present or 3DS-authenticated online payments, often 0.2–0.5 percentage points higher. There is no setup fee for the gateway plans in most cases, but confirm this before signing. For a fuller breakdown of what to expect, see our guide to PCI compliance fees for UK businesses.

Opayo vs Stripe: Key Differences for UK Businesses

Stripe and Opayo are both popular UK payment gateway options but they work quite differently. Stripe charges a flat 1.5% plus 20p per successful UK card transaction with no monthly fee, making it straightforward to budget at low volumes. Opayo charges a monthly subscription plus a separate processing rate from Elavon, which means the true cost only becomes clear once you have both quotes.

Opayo's subscription model can work out cheaper per transaction once you exceed around 500 transactions per month at average values above £30. Below that threshold, Stripe's no-fee model is typically simpler and cheaper. Opayo has stronger built-in fraud tools at no extra charge, which may tip the balance for merchants with higher chargeback risk. See our full Opayo vs Stripe comparison for a worked cost example at different monthly volumes.

Opayo Ecommerce: Online Payment Integration

Opayo's ecommerce integration is one of its strongest points for UK merchants. Pre-built plugins cover the UK's most widely used ecommerce platforms, meaning most businesses can add Opayo to their store without custom development work. The hosted payment page option handles card data entirely on Opayo's servers, which removes your site from PCI DSS scope for card data storage.

For WooCommerce merchants, Opayo provides a dedicated plugin maintained by Elavon and available through the WooCommerce extension library. It supports hosted payment pages, 3DS2 authentication and tokenisation for returning customers. Magento and PrestaShop merchants have equivalent official extensions. OpenCart integration is also available, though merchants should check version compatibility with their specific OpenCart release before installing.

Developers who need deeper integration can use Opayo's direct API, which supports server-to-server calls for businesses that want full control over the payment UI. The API documentation is published at developer.elavon.com. Custom integrations require PCI DSS assessment at a higher level than the hosted page option, so factor that compliance cost into your decision. Our guide to hosted versus self-hosted payment pages covers the trade-offs in detail.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Trusted UK brand: Opayo has operated in the UK since 2001 under the Sage Pay name. That track record gives many merchants and their customers confidence that is harder for newer entrants to match.
• Strong fraud tools included: The built-in fraud screening suite is included in the subscription rather than priced separately, which represents good value for merchants in higher-risk categories.
• Reduces PCI scope: The hosted payment page option keeps cardholder data entirely off your servers, significantly reducing the scope and cost of your annual PCI DSS compliance obligations.
• Wide ecommerce platform support: Native plugins for the UK's most popular ecommerce platforms mean most businesses can integrate without bespoke development work.
• Subscription model suits predictable volumes: If your business processes a consistent volume each month, a fixed subscription with a low per-transaction overage can be cheaper than a pure percentage model at higher volumes.

Cons

• Two-layer cost structure: You pay the Opayo gateway fee and a separate merchant account processing fee. This split pricing makes it harder to compare the true total cost against all-in-one providers like Stripe or Square.
• Settlement is slower than some rivals: The typical two-to-three working day settlement compares poorly to providers such as Dojo or Stripe, which can settle next-day or faster for eligible accounts.
• No in-house card machine for most merchants: Opayo is primarily a payment gateway. If you need a physical card terminal, you will need to arrange that separately through Elavon or another provider, which adds cost and another contract to manage.
• Customer support quality varies: A recurring complaint from UK merchants on review platforms is that phone and email support response times can be slow, particularly for non-urgent technical queries.
• Pricing not fully transparent online: The published plan prices are starting points. The actual blended processing rate from Elavon requires a separate quote, making upfront cost comparison difficult without speaking to a sales team.

Is Opayo Right for Your Business?

Opayo suits UK businesses that already know what a payment gateway is and want a proven, compliance-friendly option with minimal integration headaches. Its fraud tools, hosted payment page and wide plugin library make it particularly strong for online retailers, subscription businesses and telephone order operations. At around £45 per month for up to 1,500 transactions, the Medium plan works out at roughly 3p per transaction in gateway fees alone before processing costs. That compares well against percentage-only models at average transaction values above £40.

Where Opayo struggles is on transparency and total cost. You cannot easily calculate your all-in cost without getting a separate merchant account quote from Elavon. Providers like Stripe or Square bundle gateway and processing into a single percentage, which makes budgeting simpler for early-stage businesses. If you are processing more than £500,000 a year online, it is worth pushing Elavon for interchange-plus pricing on the merchant account side, as the default blended rate may not be the sharpest available to you. Our guide to negotiating card processing fees sets out how to approach that conversation.

Before committing, run the numbers properly. Compare Card Fees is a free, independent advisory service that has helped UK businesses find better card payment deals since 2012. The service can gather quotes from Opayo and competing gateway providers on your behalf, so you can see the total cost side by side rather than working it out across multiple sales calls.