Accepting card and online payments in Spain: TPV, Redsys, Stripe for autónomos and SLs

In Spain, an autónomo or SL accepts card payments through its bank — a virtual TPV on the Redsys network or a terminal — or through a provider: Stripe, Mollie, Adyen or MONEI. Banks are cheaper at high volumes; providers are faster to set up. Since 2026, both report your card and Bizum takings to the tax agency monthly.

This guide covers the payment options, what the fee is made of and why a bank charges two to three times less at scale, a worked example for an online school with €300,000 in sales and a shop with €2 million, what banks check before signing you up and why they refuse, when collecting money for other sellers requires a payment institution licence, and how to book sales, Stripe fees and the new bank reporting for tax.

Ways to accept payments in Spain

Whatever the channel, the key question is who your acquirer is: the bank or payment institution that contracts with you to accept card payments and pays the money into your account. The rest is hardware and software — a terminal on the counter, a checkout on your website, a link sent by message.

• Card terminal (datáfono, TPV físico). Rented from your bank, or a tap-to-pay app on an NFC phone. For shops, cafés, food trucks, clinics, studios — anyone who sees customers in person. Alternatives to bank terminals are pocket readers from SumUp, Stripe Terminal or Mollie.
• Virtual TPV for your website (TPV virtual). A bank-hosted payment page your site redirects to. Most Spanish banks process through Redsys, the shared card network, so the setup is similar everywhere: a contract with the bank, keys, and a plugin for your site. Santander offers it through its payments company Getnet, CaixaBank through Comercia Global Payments and its Addon Payments platform; BBVA, Sabadell, Cajamar and others have their own.
• Bizum for business. Payment by mobile number, hugely popular in Spain. Online, Bizum is added as a payment method inside a bank’s virtual TPV or through a provider, not as a separate contract. There is no single public price: the bank or provider sets it.
• Payment providers. Stripe (serving the EU from Ireland), Adyen and Mollie (Netherlands), PayPal, SumUp, and MONEI, a Spanish provider based in Málaga. Onboarding is online and takes days; cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, subscriptions, invoices and website-builder integrations work out of the box.
• Payment links. Sent by email or messenger; the customer pays on a secure page. Banks and providers both offer them. Good for consultants, schools and travel agencies that sell without a website cart.

In a Russian-speaking chat of small business owners in Spain, the choice usually comes down to bank versus Stripe. One member who signed a Santander TPV Virtual contract described the order: a Santander business account first, then documents and the contract, after which the site accepted cards, Google Pay, Apple Pay and Bizum. Another, selling online courses and bots, chose Stripe for its fast setup and built-in subscription handling.

What the fee is made of and why banks are cheaper

The merchant service charge (tasa de descuento in Spain) has three components:

• interchange fee — paid to the bank that issued the customer’s card. Regulation (EU) 2015/751 caps it for consumer cards at 0.2% for debit and 0.3% for credit. Commercial cards and three-party schemes such as American Express are outside the cap;
• scheme fee — what Visa and Mastercard charge for processing;
• acquirer margin — the acquirer’s income and its price for chargeback risk, fraud and service.

The first two parts are roughly the same for everyone; the difference is the margin. A bank knows you, sees your account and turnover, and carries less risk, so Spanish banks quote tenths of a percent for EEA cards. A provider onboards thousands of merchants with light checks and absorbs their risk, so its standard rate is 1.2–1.8% plus a fixed amount. Some providers (Adyen, MONEI) offer Interchange++ pricing: you pay the actual interchange and scheme fees plus a transparent margin, which gets close to bank pricing at volume.

On a €300 payment: interchange on a consumer debit card is €0.60, on a credit card €0.90. A bank charging 0.4% + €0.18 takes €1.38. Stripe’s standard EEA card rate of 1.5% + €0.25 comes to €4.75.

Pricing compared, 2026

The table shows providers’ public prices in October 2026 and a bank rate that a chat member received from Santander in 2025. Bank terms are individual and depend on volume, sector and your history with the bank, so ask for them in writing.

Note the structure: providers charge more for premium and international cards. If your customers are affluent buyers from the UK or the US, or carry premium cards, your blended Stripe rate will be well above 1.5%.

Worked example: an online school at €300,000 and a shop at €2 million

Two businesses. An online school with €300,000 a year in sales and an average ticket of €300 — 1,000 payments. An e-commerce SL with €2,000,000 a year and an average ticket of €200 — 10,000 payments. The bank is costed at the chat rate with the top monthly fee of €60 (€720 a year). Stripe is shown two ways: all standard EEA cards, and a mix of 70% standard, 20% premium and 10% international.

For the school, the gap between bank and Stripe is €2,650–3,925 a year — noticeable, but less than a week of a developer’s time on an integration. For the €2 million shop it is €21,980–30,480 a year, and a bank TPV or Interchange++ pays for any onboarding hassle. Interchange itself is only €600–900 of the school’s cost and €4,000–6,000 of the shop’s if all cards are consumer cards; the rest is margin.

Two caveats. At hundreds of thousands of euros a month, Stripe and Mollie negotiate custom rates; the public price is a ceiling. And the bank rate above applies to ordinary EEA cards — non-EEA and commercial cards are usually priced separately, so check the contract. Fees are a deductible business expense: at the 23% corporate tax rate for SLs with turnover under €10 million, saving €21,980 in fees adds €16,925 to net profit.

What the bank or provider checks

An acquirer answers to the card schemes for every merchant it signs, so it checks your business, your website and you personally. The list is similar everywhere:

• Registration and activity. For an autónomo, tax registration on Form 036 with an IAE activity code; for an SL, articles of association, tax number and beneficial owners. Your registered activity (CNAE and IAE) must match what the website sells.
• An account at the same bank. A bank TPV almost always requires a business account there for settlements. See how to open a bank account in Spain.
• Legal details on the website. Spain’s e-commerce law (LSSI-CE, Article 10) requires your name, address, email, registry details, tax number and prices including taxes and delivery. Article 27 covers the online contracting steps and terms the customer can save. Without these pages, banks will not sign.
• Terms of sale and refunds. Refund policy, delivery times, the consumer’s 14-day right of withdrawal (Article 104 of the consumer protection law), privacy and cookie policies.
• PCI DSS. The card industry security standard. If customers enter card details on the bank’s or provider’s page rather than yours, a short self-assessment is enough; storing card numbers yourself without certification is not allowed.
• 3-D Secure and strong customer authentication. Under Spain’s payment services law (Royal Decree-law 19/2018, Article 68), online card payments are confirmed with two factors, such as a code in the bank app. Modern TPV plugins and providers handle this; with a custom-built site, check that 3-D Secure 2 is on.

Why applications are refused and funds frozen

An acquirer can say no without giving reasons, and a provider can freeze money already received if it decides the business is risky. Common triggers:

• High-risk sectors. Marketplaces, financial and investment services, crypto, betting, dating, supplements, subscriptions with free trials, prepaid travel and events — anything with high chargeback or dispute rates.
• No track record. A new SL with no sales and a placeholder website is a classic refusal. Starting with a provider, building a sales history and approaching a bank with statements six to twelve months later often works.
• Owner compliance. Nationality alone does not bar a Spanish business from card acquiring, but owners from Russia, Belarus or other higher-risk jurisdictions face enhanced checks on source of funds and counterparties. Cards issued by Russian banks do not work in Spain.
• Activity differs from the application. Selling something other than declared, test payments with your own card, or taking payments for third parties.

The chat shows all of this in practice. Sabadell turned one member down for online acquiring on a project, while Santander signed him up through Getnet for another. CaixaBank connected a virtual terminal for a company website only “after a long struggle”. A marketplace for eco-friendly goods was asked for document after document by Stripe, questioned about a payment made with the owner’s own card, and then had its balance frozen without explanation. The members’ takeaway: a marketplace should choose a provider that supports that model and use its platform product, not a standard account.

Pre-authorisation: holding an amount on the customer’s card

Pre-authorisation (preautorización) blocks an amount on the customer’s card and captures it later — after the service, when a rental item is returned, at check-out. Car and holiday rentals, hotels, clinics and workshops use it for deposits or when the final amount is not known.

Only the merchant can enable it: it is a feature of the acquiring contract, not a card setting. In the chat, the answer to “how do I switch it on” was exactly that: ask your bank for online acquiring with the hold option, or pick a provider whose API supports authorise-then-capture — Cajamar’s does, and with Stripe it is a standard separate capture.

Spain’s payment services law (Royal Decree-law 19/2018, Article 47) sets two conditions: the customer’s bank may block funds only if the customer agreed to the exact amount, and must release them without delay once the final amount is known. State the amount and the hold period in your terms and on the checkout page. How long an authorisation stays valid depends on card scheme rules and card type; ask your acquirer.

Marketplaces and collecting money for others

The most dangerous mistake for a new platform is collecting payment for other sellers’ goods into its own account and paying them their share later. Legally this is not a marketplace feature but a payment service. Spain’s payment services law (Royal Decree-law 19/2018, Article 1.2) lists acquiring and money remittance (envío de dinero) among them, and only banks or institutions authorised by the Bank of Spain may provide them professionally:

• payment institution (entidad de pago) — minimum capital under Article 19: €20,000 for money remittance only, €125,000 if the services include acquiring and payment accounts. The authorisation procedure is in Royal Decree 736/2019;
• e-money institution (entidad de dinero electrónico) — at least €350,000 (Article 6 of Law 21/2011).

On top of capital come own-funds requirements, safeguarding of client money, anti-money-laundering procedures, fit-and-proper management and months of review. For a start-up this is rarely realistic, so the practical route is a provider’s platform product: Stripe Connect, Mollie Connect, Adyen for Platforms or MONEI. The buyer’s payment is split at source — the seller’s share goes to the seller’s account with the provider, your commission to you. The provider holds the licence; you are vetted as a platform.

The law has a commercial-agent exemption (Article 4.b): payments through an agent authorised by contract to negotiate or conclude sales on behalf of only one party, either the buyer or the seller. A typical marketplace acts for sellers and serves buyers at the same time, so the exemption does not apply. An agency model can work when you genuinely sell for one principal under an agency agreement, not when you collect money from everyone.

In the chat, a member whose marketplace ran on Mollie said the warning came after the very first payments, and they had to start splitting them. Another, having connected a CaixaBank terminal for his company site, offered to let other people sell through it and pass on the money minus a commission — exactly the scheme that needs a licence. There is a tax side too: everything that goes through your terminal is reported to the tax agency as yours, and proving it was someone else’s money is your job.

Tax and bookkeeping: revenue, fees, bank reporting

Book revenue gross, on an accruals basis. Income and expenses belong to the period in which they accrue, not when cash arrives (Article 11 of the Corporate Income Tax Law 27/2014; the same rules apply to autónomos on direct assessment). Stripe and banks pay out days later and net of fees, so record the full sale and the fee as a separate expense. For VAT, prepayments trigger VAT when received (Article 75.Two of the VAT Law 37/1992): a school selling an annual course in December accounts for VAT in that period. More in IVA tax in Spain.

Fees are an expense — and Stripe’s are an intra-EU purchase. A Spanish bank’s TPV fees appear on statements or monthly documents as an ordinary expense. Stripe invoices from Ireland without VAT. In practice, Spanish accountants treat this as a service from another EU country: VAT is self-assessed under the reverse charge (Article 84.One.2 of the VAT Law) on Form 303 (modelo 303) and deducted in the same return, and the purchase goes on the EU recapitulative statement, Form 349 (modelo 349). You need a VIES-registered VAT number — see VAT number in Spain. Confirm with your gestor how your provider’s fees are classified, since it decides whether a Form 349 line is needed.

The cost of getting it wrong is real. A chat member who switched accountants found he had never passed on Google Ads invoices from Ireland, each of which had to be reported; the fine was €300 per omission. That is the minimum under Article 198 of the General Tax Law: €20 per set of data, at least €300 and at most €20,000. Stripe fees and other EU service invoices follow the same logic. If a return has already been missed, see Spanish tax penalties for late returns.

Since 2026 the tax agency sees all your card takings. Royal Decree 253/2025 rewrote Article 38 bis of the tax administration regulation. Banks, payment and e-money institutions, and foreign providers operating in Spain under the EU freedom to provide services now file Form 170 every month on every business and professional who accepts payment by any type of card or by mobile number — that is, Bizum. The return includes your details, merchant number, terminals (even abroad), the monthly amount split between cards and mobile payments, and the accounts the money went to. The old €3,000 annual threshold is gone. The first monthly Form 170 covered January 2026 and was filed in February 2026.

You file nothing yourself, but the tax agency matches this data with your Form 303 and Form 130 as an autónomo or Form 200 as an SL. If more went through your terminal than you declared, expect a query. Bizum between private individuals is not included. Separately, banks report annually on cards held by individuals with over €25,000 of activity (Article 38 ter) — that concerns cardholders, not your sales. Autónomo taxes step by step: autónomo taxes in Spain.

Verifactu. Invoicing software must comply with the Verifactu regulation (Royal Decree 1007/2023) by 1 January 2027 for companies and 1 July 2027 for autónomos (on 5 October 2026 the Ministry of Finance announced plans to move these deadlines for autónomos and SMEs to October 2028, Ministry of Finance note; until the rule is published in the BOE, the 2027 dates apply); your online checkout should issue invoices through compliant software.

Autónomo or SL: who should hold the merchant account

Both can. An autónomo signs up under their own tax number and business account — quicker, but sales flow straight into personal income tax at rates up to 47%, higher in some regions. An SL receives money into the company account, pays 23–25% corporate tax and decides when to distribute dividends. For a business with €300,000+ in sales and 30–40% margins this usually favours an SL, so it is better to put the merchant account in the company’s name from the start: moving a terminal and sales history from an autónomo to an SL means a new review and a new contract. Compare the options in autónomo in Spain and starting a business in Spain; company set-up is covered on company registration in Spain.

Key points on accepting card payments in Spain

• You can accept cards through a bank (virtual TPV on Redsys, terminal) or a provider — Stripe, Mollie, Adyen, MONEI, SumUp. Bizum is added inside a bank TPV or through a provider.
• Interchange on consumer cards is capped at 0.2% for debit and 0.3% for credit; the rest is the acquirer’s margin, and banks charge less of it.
• At €300,000 a year a bank costs about €2,100, Stripe €4,750–6,025; at €2 million the gap reaches €21,980–30,480.
• Banks check your activity code, website details under LSSI-CE Article 10, refund policy and 3-D Secure; marketplaces, high-risk sectors and new companies are refused more often.
• Collecting other sellers’ money into your account is a payment service: it needs a licence (capital €20,000–125,000) or a provider’s platform product.
• Since January 2026 banks and providers report all card and Bizum takings to the tax agency monthly with no threshold; book revenue gross, fees as an expense, Stripe invoices on Forms 303 and 349. We can review your payment set-up in a consultation.

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Frequently asked questions about card payments in Spain

Which Spanish banks offer online card acquiring for a website?

Almost every major bank has a virtual TPV: Santander through Getnet, CaixaBank through Comercia and Addon Payments, BBVA, Sabadell, Cajamar. You usually need a business account at the same bank and a website with legal details and terms of sale. Approval is case by case, and branches of the same bank may answer differently.

Is a bank TPV or Stripe cheaper?

At high volume, the bank. For example, at a bank rate of 0.4% + €0.18 and a €60 monthly fee, €300,000 in sales costs €2,100 a year; at Stripe’s 1.5% + €0.25 it costs €4,750, and more with premium and international cards. Stripe wins on speed of setup and built-in subscriptions.

Why did the bank refuse online acquiring?

Banks do not have to explain. The usual reasons are high-risk sectors and marketplaces, new companies without sales history, websites without legal details or refund terms, and enhanced checks on the owner. Try another bank or a provider, and reapply with turnover statements six to twelve months later.

Can I take payments for other sellers through my website?

Only through a provider’s platform product, such as Stripe Connect or Mollie Connect, where the seller’s money goes straight to the seller. Collecting other people’s money into your account and passing it on is a payment service that requires a Bank of Spain licence with capital of €20,000 to €125,000.

How do I set up a hold on a customer’s card?

A hold, or pre-authorisation, is a feature of the merchant’s acquiring contract; the customer cannot switch it on. Ask your bank for a TPV with pre-authorisation or use a provider with delayed capture. The law requires the customer to agree to the exact amount blocked and the bank to release it once the final amount is known.

Does the Spanish tax agency see card and Bizum payments?

Yes. Since January 2026 banks, payment institutions and foreign providers file Form 170 every month on all card and Bizum takings of businesses and professionals, with no €3,000 annual threshold. The tax agency matches this data against your VAT and income or corporate tax returns.

Do Stripe fees go on Form 349?

Stripe invoices from Ireland without VAT, and in practice Spanish accountants treat this as an EU service: reverse-charge VAT on Form 303 and a line on Form 349. Missing data in an information return costs €20 per set of data, at least €300. Confirm the treatment of your provider’s fees with your gestor.

Can I accept card payments as an autónomo, without an SL?

Yes, banks and providers onboard autónomos under their own tax number. But with €300,000+ in sales and good margins an SL taxed at 23–25% is usually better, and moving a terminal from an autónomo to a company means a new review, so choose the structure before you sign up.

Sources

• Payment Services Royal Decree-law 19/2018: Articles 1, 3, 4, 19, 47, 68 (BOE)
• Royal Decree 736/2019 on payment services and payment institutions (BOE)
• Law 21/2011 on electronic money, Article 6 (BOE)
• Regulation (EU) 2015/751 on interchange fees for card-based payments (EUR-Lex)
• Tax administration regulation, Royal Decree 1065/2007: Articles 38 bis and 38 ter (BOE)
• Royal Decree 253/2025: monthly reporting of card and Bizum takings (BOE)
• Spanish Tax Agency: new Forms 170 and 171 (AEAT)
• Law 34/2002 on information society services and e-commerce (LSSI-CE), Articles 10 and 27 (BOE)
• Consumer protection law, Royal Legislative Decree 1/2007, Article 104 (BOE)
• VAT Law 37/1992, Articles 75 and 84 (BOE)
• Corporate Income Tax Law 27/2014, Article 11 (BOE)
• General Tax Law 58/2003, Article 198 (BOE)
• Royal Decree 1007/2023, Verifactu regulation, as amended by Royal Decree-law 15/2025 (BOE)
• Bank of Spain: payment institutions
• Stripe pricing for Spain
• Mollie pricing for Spain
• SumUp pricing for Spain