Taking payments in person: cash, card readers, and self-service kiosks.
This guide explains the practical and legal parts of taking payments face to face at a UK event: the ban on charging customers extra to pay by card, how in-person card fees compare with online, what a card reader does to your PCI paperwork, the access duty a self-service kiosk brings with it, and the cash-handling good practice that card payments quietly remove. It is general information for organisers, not legal, tax, or compliance advice. Rules change, and what counts as reasonable depends on your situation, so for decisions about your own event check the current position or take professional advice.
Last updated 6 July 2026.
To the best of our knowledge at the time of writing. This guide covers UK consumer, equality, and payment-security rules that change over time, and it is general information, not legal or compliance advice. For your own situation, check the current position or take professional advice.
Two ways money comes in, and in-person is the fiddly one.
On the day you can take cash, take a card on your own card machine and record it, take a card on an app-driven reader that your ticketing system drives, or let people serve themselves at an unattended kiosk. Each has different friction, different costs, and, in a couple of cases, different rules. The rest of this guide works through them, so you can pick the mix that fits your event rather than defaulting to a cash tin because it is what you have always used.
Cash still works, but it is not free of effort.
Counting, reconciling, storing, and banking
Cash has no processing fee, which is why the tin on the door will never entirely disappear. What it does have is work. Good-practice guidance for charities and community groups (the Charity Commission's internal financial controls guidance, CC8, and the Fundraising Regulator's Code of Fundraising Practice for collections) expects takings to be counted, ideally by two people, recorded and reconciled against a written total, stored securely, and banked promptly. For a one-night fete that is a float, a lockable box, and half an hour cashing up. Across a season of events it is a standing overhead, and it is exactly the work an electronic payment removes.
- No processing fee, but a real handling cost: counting, reconciling, storing, and banking
- Good practice is for two people to count, and a second person to review the reconciliation
- Keep un-banked cash secure and bank it promptly (Charity Commission CC8)
- Fundraising cash collections carry their own rules (Fundraising Regulator Code of Fundraising Practice)
- A digital payment reconciles itself against your records, which is most of the appeal of taking cards
Taking a card in person: card readers and card-present payments.
What the reader does, and the one thing it needs
A modern card reader (such as a Stripe Terminal reader) takes the card at the point of sale by chip and PIN or contactless, including phone wallets. When the ticketing system drives the reader directly, the payment is recorded against the order automatically, so there is nothing to reconcile by hand and no second device to cash up. The one thing every card reader needs is a live connection: it has to reach the payment processor to authorise the payment. That is the crucial difference from scanning tickets, which can run fully offline. A card reader works at a box office, a welcome desk, or a staffed stall with wifi or a mobile signal. It will not work in a field or a thick-walled gatehouse with no reception, where cash and an offline scanner stay the right tools.
- Chip and PIN, contactless, and phone wallets, taken at the point of sale
- Card-present: the customer taps or inserts their own card, nothing is keyed in by staff
- When the ticketing system drives the reader, the payment lands on the order automatically
- A reader needs a live connection to authorise, so it is not an offline capability
- No signal means cash and offline scanning, not a card reader
You cannot charge extra for paying by card.
That means an in-person card fee has to be absorbed into your pricing, not added as a separate line at the point of sale. Whatever price is on the poster is what the card payer pays. The ban covers personal cards; a genuine business paying on a commercial card falls outside it, but you cannot tell a consumer card from a commercial one at the door, so the safe rule for any box office is simply never to add a card surcharge.
This is worth knowing before you set your prices. If the card cost matters to your margin, build it into the ticket price rather than planning to add it on the night, because on the night you are not allowed to.
In-person card fees are usually a little lower than online.
Card-present pricing, as an example
Because a card presented in person carries less fraud risk than a card number typed into a website, processors usually price it lower and publish it on a separate tariff. Stripe's UK pricing, for example, lists an in-person base rate of 1.4% + 10p per charge against 1.5% + 20p for a standard UK card online. The numbers move over time and every provider is different, so treat that as an illustration rather than a quote, but the shape holds: taking the card in person is typically a touch cheaper than taking it online, and because you have to absorb it, that difference works in your favour. Recording a payment you took on your own separate card machine is different again, because there the processing sits with your own merchant provider and a ticketing platform may charge nothing simply to record it.
Self-service kiosks, and the access duty that comes with them.
Let people serve themselves, but not only that
An unattended self-service kiosk lets a customer browse, choose, and pay for their own ticket by card with no member of staff behind a till, which is useful when a queue builds at a busy gate or foyer. It carries a responsibility worth planning for. If you sell admission to the public you are a service provider under the Equality Act 2010, with an anticipatory duty to make reasonable adjustments so a disabled person is not put at a substantial disadvantage (sections 20 and 29, and Schedule 2). The Act expressly lets you provide the service by a reasonable alternative method. In practice that means a self-service kiosk should not be the only way to buy in person: keep a staffed option or assistance available for anyone who cannot use the screen. A kiosk that clears the queue for most people while someone on the desk helps the rest is the arrangement that works, and, like any card device, a kiosk needs power and a live connection where it stands.
- A kiosk suits a busy walk-up gate or foyer where a queue would otherwise build
- Selling admission to the public makes you a service provider under the Equality Act 2010
- The duty to make reasonable adjustments is anticipatory: plan for it in advance, not on request
- A kiosk should not be the only way to buy in person; keep a staffed alternative available
- Like any card device, a kiosk needs mains power and a live connection where it stands
What taking cards in person does to your PCI paperwork.
In practice you complete a much shorter annual self-assessment. The relevant one for a standalone card reader is usually SAQ B-IP, or SAQ P2PE for a validated point-to-point-encryption setup, rather than the far longer questionnaire that applies if you key card numbers into a computer yourself. The exact self-assessment depends on your setup, so confirm it with your payment provider rather than guessing. The thing to avoid is typing customers' card numbers into a laptop or a web form to save the cost of a reader, because that pulls far more of your own systems into scope.
Where in-person selling goes wrong.
The mistakes that catch organisers out
Most of the trouble with taking money on the day comes from a handful of avoidable mistakes.
- Adding a card surcharge at the till. Banned for consumer cards since 2018, so absorb the fee into the price instead.
- Assuming a card reader works anywhere. It needs a live connection, so in a no-signal field plan for cash and offline scanning.
- Making a self-service kiosk the only way to buy in person, which risks breaching the Equality Act duty to make reasonable adjustments. Keep a staffed alternative.
- Keying card numbers into a laptop or web form instead of using a reader, which drags your systems into a much larger PCI assessment.
- Taking cash with no reconciliation. Count it, record it against a written total, store it securely, and bank it promptly.
- Assuming in-person card sales are free. A processed card payment carries a fee; only cash, or a payment you record from your own machine, avoids a platform processing charge.
A worked example. £10 on the door.
You cannot charge the card payer £10.24, because adding a card surcharge to a consumer card is banned. So you either absorb the 24p (you receive £9.76, the customer pays the £10 on the poster) or you set the on-the-door price at £10 for everyone and treat the 24p as a cost of trading, the same way you already treat it online.
Against that 24p, weigh what the card saves: no float to find, no queue at the cash tin, no two-person count at the end of the night, no un-banked cash to lock away, and a figure that already reconciles against your records. For a lot of events that is a trade worth making. For a small rural fete with no signal, the tin still wins, because a card reader would not connect anyway. The point is to choose deliberately, not by default.
Where a platform helps.
On Seaty, in-person card readers and unattended self-service kiosks are an enabled service the Seaty team sets up for an organisation. The reader is driven directly so the payment lands on the order automatically, and the in-person fee is absorbed as the law requires. A kiosk fitted with a ticket printer can also hand the buyer a paper ticket on the spot, and an order can be printed to that kiosk's printer from the admin. None of that changes the rules above; it just handles them for you.
Related guides
Sources & further reading
UK legislation
The Consumer Rights (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012, SI 2012/3110, as amended (legislation.gov.uk)
Equality Act 2010, section 29 (legislation.gov.uk)
gov.uk guidance
Card surcharge ban: no more nasty surprises for shoppers (gov.uk)
Internal financial controls for charities, CC8 (Charity Commission, gov.uk)
Payment security and processing
Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE) standard (PCI Security Standards Council)
Stripe: UK pricing, online and in-person rates
Fundraising
Cash collections (Fundraising Regulator)
