Zahl exists because working out what a card machine or payment gateway actually costs shouldn't require a call with a salesperson, a maths degree, or an afternoon you don't have.
We're an independent site — not owned by a bank, a card machine provider, or anyone with a rate to sell you. We built Zahl for UK small and medium businesses who just want a straight answer to a simple question: what will this actually cost me each month?
Every provider leads with a headline rate. Almost none of them lead with what you'll really pay once you add the monthly fee, the hardware, and the bits they don't put in bold. We got tired of doing that maths by hand — so we built a calculator that does it for you, and a blog that explains the jargon (interchange, chargebacks, PCI, all of it) in plain English, without making you feel like you should already know.
Zahl is built by people who work in payments — which mostly means we've sat through enough "simple" pricing calls to know they rarely are. We're small, independent, and genuinely just trying to make this bit of running a business less annoying.
Some of the links on Zahl are affiliate links — if you sign up with a provider through one, we may earn a small commission. It never changes the numbers we show you; the same rate is displayed whether a link earns us anything or not. You can read more on that in our footer, because we'd rather over-explain it than have you wonder.