# Dojo Fees 2026: What the 1.2% Rate Really Costs a Cafe, Bar or Restaurant

> Dojo advertises the lowest published in-person card rate in the UK, a 1.2% blended rate across every card type. Below an average sale of about £9, its 5p secure transaction fee makes that the most expensive option on the market rather than the cheapest.

- Author: Alex Riesenkampff (Super44)
- Published: 2026-09-15
- Canonical: https://super44.ai/blog/dojo-fees

## Key takeaways

- Dojo advertises a 1.2% blended in-person card rate for UK card turnover under £100,000 a year, the lowest published headline rate on the UK market with no separate subscription attached (Dojo pricing, checked 8 September 2026).
- A 5p secure transaction fee on every sale pushes the effective rate to 2.39% on a £4.20 coffee and down to 1.40% on a £25 lunch (Dojo FAQ, checked 8 September 2026).
- Against a flat 1.75% rate the crossover sits at an average sale of about £9.09; against SumUp's 1.69% pay-as-you-go rate it sits at about £10.20. Below those tickets, Dojo's lower headline is the more expensive bill.
- The £11.99-a-month Plus plan is a new-customer promotional price against a standing £25 a month, available only to new customers and new locations of existing customers signing up from 24 August 2026.
- Above £100,000 of annual card turnover the 1.2% disappears into a custom quote, and Dojo's FAQ separately states that businesses under £1,000,000 a year get a 12-month fixed contract that then rolls monthly.

Search "dojo fees" and the headline number is 1.2%, the lowest published in-person card rate in the UK with no separate subscription attached. **That figure is real, and it is also the least useful number on Dojo's pricing page, because a 5p secure transaction fee on every sale means the lowest advertised rate in the country is the most expensive one for any venue with an average sale under about £9.** A restaurant with a £25 average bill gets the best quoted rate in the market. A coffee shop with a £4.20 average ticket pays more than it would on a higher headline elsewhere.

This guide works through what Dojo publishes, checked against its own pricing and FAQ pages on 8 September 2026, and what it leaves for you to work out yourself. Super44 does not resell payment terminals or take a commission on card processing, so none of this is a pitch to switch provider. It is the arithmetic the pricing page does not do for you.

## What Dojo's 1.2% blended rate covers, and what it costs above £100,000

Dojo's pitch is a single number rather than a table of exceptions. **"Get clear and predictable bills with a 1.2% blended transaction rate for all card transactions," Dojo's pricing page states, describing one rate across every card type rather than a schedule of exceptions.** That is worth checking against a competitor's own small print rather than taking at face value: SumUp's discounted 0.99% Payments Plus rate, for comparison, applies only to UK domestic debit and credit cards, with international, corporate and premium cards charged at 1.69% instead. Dojo's own page states no equivalent carve-out on its 1.2% rate.

The FAQ adds two lines the pricing page does not: a "Secure transaction fee* - £0.05 per authorisation" and a "Refund Fee - £0.5 per transaction." The asterisk on the secure transaction fee is not expanded anywhere on the page, which is worth asking about directly before you sign, since an unexplained asterisk next to a per-transaction charge is exactly the kind of detail that should be in writing rather than inferred.

**Dojo UK published fees, checked 8 September 2026**

| Charge | Rate |
| --- | --- |
| In-person blended rate, under £100,000/year | 1.2% |
| Secure transaction fee | £0.05 per sale |
| Refund fee | £0.50 per refund |
| Essential plan | £0/month |
| Plus plan (new customers, from 24 Aug 2026) | £11.99/month, standing rate £25 |
| Contract, under £1m/year turnover | 12 months, then monthly rolling |

*Source: Dojo pricing and FAQ pages, checked 8 September 2026. The Plus plan discount is promotional; the standing price is £25 a month.*

## The 5p fee makes 1.2% the most expensive rate below a £9 average sale

A percentage rate scales with the sale. A flat 5p charge does not, so it dominates a small transaction and disappears into a large one. **A £4.20 coffee costs an effective 2.39% once the 5p fee is added to the 1.2% rate, while a £25 lunch on the same terms costs 1.40%, and the crossover against a flat 1.75% rate sits at an average sale of about £9.09.** That 1.75% is not a hypothetical: it is the published in-person rate at both [Square](/blog/square-fees) and [Zettle by PayPal](/blog/zettle-fees), neither of which adds a fixed pence charge. Against [SumUp's](/blog/sumup-fees) 1.69% pay-as-you-go rate, which also carries no fixed pence component, the crossover moves out slightly to about £10.20.

That inversion is the whole story on this page. A restaurant, a bar with table service, or any venue where the average sale clears £10 gets the best quoted headline rate in the UK from Dojo. A coffee shop, a bakery, or a market stall with a sub-£5 average ticket pays more on Dojo's advertised lowest rate than it would on SumUp's pay-as-you-go plan or Square's flat 1.75%, despite Dojo's number being smaller on the page.

**What does Dojo cost you, once the 5p fee is included?** *(interactive calculator in the web version)*

Example (Average sale value: 8 £, Monthly card turnover: 8,000 £):

- Effective all-in rate on Dojo: 2 %
- What that costs you a year: 1,752 £

*Uses Dojo's published UK in-person rate (1.2% blended, 5p secure transaction fee per sale), checked 8 September 2026, and applies below £100,000 of annual card turnover. Compare the effective rate above against a flat 1.75% or 1.69% quote from another provider before deciding; the 1.2% headline on its own will not tell you which is cheaper.*

If your average sale sits below about £9, run that number against our [card fee calculator](/blog/card-fee-calculator-uk), which puts Dojo's blended rate next to SumUp, Square and PayPal Point of Sale at your own turnover in one pass.

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## Where the 1.2% comes from, and why no flat rate sits at the regulated floor

A blended rate is not a discount, it is one number standing in for several separate costs. UK law caps consumer card interchange, the fee that goes to the customer's card-issuing bank, at 0.2% for debit and 0.3% for credit. **The Payment Systems Regulator's own market review found that Visa and Mastercard raised the scheme fees they charge acquirers by at least 25% since 2017, adding at least £170 million a year in cost to UK businesses.** Every flat-rate provider, Dojo included, has to price above that capped layer to cover the uncapped scheme fee and its own margin, which is why 1.2% is the floor of what a UK card machine can plausibly cost rather than a discount below the regulated rate.

A blended headline like Dojo's 1.2% is easier to read than an interchange-plus statement, but easier to read is not the same as easier to compare. The regulator's own finding is that "a lack of easy-to-understand fee information has led to costs for acquirers and merchants, including small retailers," and that "Mastercard and Visa don't face competition with fees rising." A single blended number is where that lands on you: it tells you what you pay in total and nothing about which layer moved when the bill changes. Our [anti-lock-in POS buyer's guide](/blog/pos-anti-lock-in-guide) takes that three-layer stack apart in full.

## The Plus plan's £11.99 is a new-customer price, not the standing rate

Dojo's software tier carries the same pattern seen across UK card-machine pricing pages: a promotional number sitting in front of the real one. **Dojo's Essential plan is free, and its Plus plan is priced at £25 a month, shown struck through against £11.99 a month, with the smaller figure available "for new customers and new locations of existing customers" signing up from 24 August 2026.** Nothing on the page states when that offer ends.

That matters because £11.99 and £25 are not a rounding difference, they are more than double. If you are comparing Dojo against a competitor's stated monthly fee, compare against £25, then ask directly what the promotional period is and get the answer in writing before you sign. A quote that reverts to double its advertised price after an unstated number of months is not a quote you can budget against.

## Dojo's hardware prices are launch offers against a higher list price

Dojo sells its own card readers outright or on a monthly rental, and the outright prices carry the same promotional structure as the software plan. **Dojo Go Max is listed at £149 upfront as a launch offer against a standing £229, or £25 a month; Dojo Pocket is £239 outright or £20 a month; Dojo Wired is £179 outright or £15 a month; and Tap to Pay on iPhone costs nothing and carries no contract.** As with the Plus plan, the pricing page does not say how long the launch price on the Go Max holds.

Buying outright avoids the trap that sits inside most rental agreements: a terminal you are still paying for after you have switched provider. If you take the monthly rental route on any hardware, confirm in writing whether the device is yours once you have paid it off, or whether you are renting it for as long as you keep the account open. Tap to Pay on iPhone is the only option here with no purchase, no rental and no contract at all, which makes it the lowest-commitment way to trial Dojo before buying a dedicated reader.

## Above £100,000 a year, 1.2% stops being the number you pay

Dojo's published rate has a ceiling, and it is lower than it sounds for a growing venue. **Once annual card turnover passes £100,000, Dojo's pricing page replaces the 1.2% blended rate with a "Custom rate," offered on either a 12-month fixed plan or a 30-day rolling one, with no published figure for what that custom rate comes out at.** A single busy weekend location can cross £100,000 in card turnover within its first full year of trading, well before the owner has thought to renegotiate anything.

Treat the 1.2% as a starting-line rate rather than a permanent one if you expect meaningful growth. The practical move is the same one that applies to every provider once you are quoted individually rather than reading a published number: work out your own effective rate first, from a real month's statement, so you have a figure to hold a custom quote against rather than negotiating from the advertised 1.2% you may no longer be eligible for.

## The contract length, and what the buyout offer really finances

Card machine contracts are one of the few places on this page where the small print outweighs the headline rate. **Dojo's FAQ states that "for businesses with under £1m card turnover per year, our contracts are 12 months and then become monthly rolling," and its pricing page separately lists a contract buyout offer of up to £3,000 for merchants switching from another provider.** Twelve months is a standard term in this market rather than an outlier, and the rolling structure afterwards means you are not locked in indefinitely once the first year is done.

The buyout is worth reading carefully rather than taking as free money. Providers across the market structure these incentives in different ways. General guidance on the practice is blunt about the risk: "some providers offer to 'pay off' your old contract if you switch to them," one payments-industry guide notes, but "that buyout is often added to your new term as an extra monthly charge, so you pay it anyway, just spread out." That is not a claim about how Dojo specifically structures its own offer, and Dojo's page does not say either way, which is precisely why it is worth asking directly: does the £3,000 sit outside your new 12-month agreement, or is it recovered through it. Get the answer in writing before you switch on the strength of the buyout alone.

## The 50p refund fee rarely decides anything in hospitality

Dojo charges for taking a refund as well as taking a payment. **Its FAQ lists a "Refund Fee - £0.5 per transaction," on top of the 1.2% rate and the 5p secure transaction fee already charged on the original sale.** For a typical cafe, bar or restaurant, where refunds are an occasional correction rather than a regular part of trade, this is a minor line rather than a deciding one.

It is worth a moment's thought if your business runs materially more refunds than that, a bar tab system with frequent voids, or a business that processes a meaningful share of pre-orders that sometimes fall through. In that case the 50p adds up in a way a typical hospitality venue's refund rate does not, and it is one more figure to fold into your own effective-rate calculation rather than assume away.

## Who should sign up for Dojo, and who should not

The decision comes down to one number you already have: your average sale value from your own till, not the headline rate on Dojo's homepage. **A venue with an average sale above roughly £10, a restaurant, a bar with table service, a shop selling higher-ticket items, gets the best quoted headline rate in the UK from Dojo's 1.2% blended pricing, provided its turnover stays under the £100,000 threshold where the published rate applies.** A venue with an average sale under about £9, most coffee shops, bakeries and quick-service counters, pays more on Dojo than it would on a pure-percentage competitor with a higher headline and no fixed pence charge.

**Before you sign up for Dojo**

- [ ] **Your average sale value**: Total card turnover divided by transaction count, from your own statement. This decides whether the 5p fee helps or hurts you more than any other single number.
- [ ] **Your annual card turnover trajectory**: If you are likely to cross £100,000 within the contract term, ask what the custom rate looks like now rather than after you are already over it.
- [ ] **The Plus plan end date**: Get the length of the £11.99 promotional period in writing, and budget for the standing £25 once it ends.
- [ ] **The Go Max launch price**: Confirm whether £149 is time-limited before you plan around it, the same way you would with the Plus plan.
- [ ] **How the buyout is financed**: Ask directly whether a contract buyout is added to your new term as a separate charge or genuinely absorbed by Dojo.
- [ ] **What the secure transaction fee asterisk means**: Dojo's FAQ does not expand it. Ask for the full definition in writing before you rely on the 5p figure.

*Work these out before you contact Dojo or a competitor. A provider quoting against your actual average sale and turnover gives a different answer than one quoting against the headline rate.*

None of this is peculiar to Dojo. Every UK card processor prices around a headline number that only tells the full story once you add your own volume and card mix, which is exactly why our [card fee calculator](/blog/card-fee-calculator-uk) exists: put your own numbers through Dojo, SumUp, Square and PayPal Point of Sale at once rather than reading four pricing pages by hand. If the till itself is still an open question, our [comparison of till systems for a first cafe](/blog/best-pos-systems-first-cafe) puts Dojo's terms next to six other options a small venue would shortlist, with the exit terms and hardware costs attached to each. And if a processing rate is one line on a bigger P&L you are trying to get under control, our [anti-lock-in POS buyer's guide](/blog/pos-anti-lock-in-guide) covers the contract clauses and total cost of ownership that sit around it, on whichever provider you end up choosing.

## FAQ

### What is Dojo's card machine fee in the UK?

Dojo charges a 1.2% blended in-person rate for UK card turnover under £100,000 a year, the same figure for every card type it publishes a rate for. On top of that its FAQ lists a 5p secure transaction fee on every sale and a 50p fee on every refund. Above £100,000 a year the 1.2% is replaced with a custom quote.

### Is Dojo actually the cheapest card machine in the UK?

Only above a certain average sale. The 5p secure transaction fee turns 1.2% into an effective 2.39% on a £4.20 coffee, worse than SumUp, Square or PayPal Point of Sale. It beats a flat 1.75% rate once your average sale passes about £9.09, and SumUp's 1.69% pay-as-you-go rate once it passes about £10.20.

### What happens to Dojo's rate above £100,000 a year in card turnover?

Dojo's pricing page replaces the published 1.2% with a "Custom rate" once annual card turnover passes £100,000, offered on either a 12-month fixed plan or a 30-day rolling one. There is no published number for what that custom rate typically comes out at, so a growing venue should renegotiate rather than assume the 1.2% carries on.

### Does Dojo's £11.99-a-month Plus plan last forever?

No. Dojo's own pricing page shows £25 a month struck through against £11.99, with the smaller figure marked as available "for new customers and new locations of existing customers" signing up from 24 August 2026. Budget for the standing £25 rate once a promotional period like this ends, and get the end date in writing before you sign up.

### What contract length does Dojo require?

Dojo's FAQ states that businesses with under £1,000,000 a year in card turnover get a 12-month fixed contract that becomes monthly rolling afterwards. Dojo's pricing page also lists a contract buyout offer of up to £3,000 for switchers, which is a switching incentive rather than free money, so ask exactly how it is financed before assuming it sits outside your new agreement.

### Does Dojo charge extra for refunds?

Yes, 50p per refund according to its FAQ, on top of the 1.2% and 5p per-sale fee. Hospitality venues typically refund a small share of transactions, so this rarely decides the outcome, but it is one more line to add if you run a business with a meaningfully higher refund rate than a typical cafe or restaurant.

## Sources

1. [Dojo pricing and fees](https://dojo.tech/pricing) — "Get clear and predictable bills with a 1.2% blended transaction rate for all card transactions" below £100,000 annual card turnover; above that a "Custom rate" with a "12-month fixed plan or choose 30-day rolling". Plans: Essential "Free" per month per location, Plus "£25" shown struck through against "£11.99*" per month per location, the offer "only available for new customers and new locations of existing customers from 24 August 2026". Hardware: Dojo Go Max "£149" upfront against "£229" as a launch offer or "£25" monthly, Dojo Pocket "£239" or "£20", Dojo Wired "£179" or "£15", Tap to Pay on iPhone "£0" with "No contract". "Contract buyout up to £3,000". Checked 8 September 2026.
2. [Dojo frequently asked questions](https://dojo.tech/faqs) — "Secure transaction fee* - £0.05 per authorisation." and "Refund Fee - £0.5 per transaction." On term: "For businesses with under £1m card turnover per year, our contracts are 12 months and then become monthly rolling." The asterisk on the secure transaction fee is not expanded on the page. Checked 8 September 2026.
3. [Payment Systems Regulator - the Interchange Fee Regulation](https://www.psr.org.uk/our-work/card-payments/the-ifr/) — Caps of "0.2% of the value of a transaction for consumer debit cards (including prepaid cards), and 0.3% for consumer credit cards." Checked 15 September 2026.
4. [Payment Systems Regulator - market review of card scheme and processing fees, final report](https://www.psr.org.uk/publications/market-reviews/mr22110-market-review-of-card-scheme-and-processing-fees-final-report/) — Final report MR22/1.10, published 6 March 2025. "Mastercard and Visa increased their core scheme and processing fees to acquirers by at least 25% since 2017", costing businesses "at least £170million extra per year". Also: "a lack of easy-to-understand fee information has led to costs for acquirers and merchants, including small retailers." Checked 15 September 2026.
5. [Payment Systems Regulator - market review into card scheme and processing fees](https://www.psr.org.uk/our-work/market-reviews/market-review-into-card-scheme-and-processing-fees/) — States the review "found that Mastercard and Visa don't face competition with fees rising and a lack of clarity on how much businesses will have to pay to accept card payments." Checked 15 September 2026.
6. [FStech: Card acquiring market "failing smaller merchants"](https://www.fstech.co.uk/fst/Payment_Systems_Regulator_Card_Acquiring_Review_Findings.php) — Trade-press summary of the Payment Systems Regulator's 2020 card-acquiring interim report: "most other merchants - particularly smaller ones - may not be getting a good deal", and "Many merchants do not shop around or look to negotiate with their existing provider." Published 15 September 2020. Checked 15 September 2026.
7. [Smart Payment Solutions: Card machine contracts, what to check before you sign](https://smartpaymentsolutions.info/blog/card-machine-contracts-what-to-check-before-you-sign) — General guidance, not specific to Dojo: "Some providers offer to 'pay off' your old contract if you switch to them... that buyout is often added to your new term as an extra monthly charge, so you pay it anyway, just spread out." Checked 15 September 2026.
8. [UKHospitality - Facts and stats](https://www.ukhospitality.org.uk/media-centre/facts-and-stats/) — No breakdown of average transaction or spend value by venue type is published here, and none was found elsewhere in UK sector data. Ticket-size examples in this article are illustrative, not benchmarked figures. Checked 15 September 2026.