Payments Used by UK Wholesale Companies: Market Share (2026)
Detected Payments usage across 1,974 of 77,014 trading UK wholesale companies, with PayPal ahead at 42.6% of detections.
Among 77,014 trading UK wholesale companies, 1,974 have a detectable Payments system. PayPal has the largest detected share at 42.6% (841), followed by Stripe at 38.8% (765) and PayU at 18.6% (368).
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PayPal is the highest-share system in each employee band: 41.6% among Under 10 employees, 44.0% among 10–50 employees, and 52.9% among Over 50 employees. The detected market is therefore led by the same system across company sizes, rather than splitting cleanly by headcount.
The long tail is broad but shallow. Beyond PayPal, Stripe, PayU, Klarna, Worldpay, Square, Opayo and Authorize.net, 6 further systems cover 41 companies between them.
1,974
wholesale with detected Payments
Of 77,014 UK wholesale
2.6%
Detection rate
2026
14
Systems detected
In this category
42.6%
Leader share
PayPal
UK Wholesale Payments market share
Payments compared
| System | UK Wholesale | Share | Median headcount | London share | Typical profile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PayPal | 841 | 42.6% | 6 | 15.6% | 6-person wholesalers, 42.6% share |
| Stripe | 765 | 38.8% | 6 | 11.4% | 6-person wholesalers, 38.8% share |
| PayU | 368 | 18.6% | 6 | 15.2% | 6-person wholesalers, 18.6% share |
| Klarna | 131 | 6.6% | 6 | 11.5% | 6-person wholesalers, 6.6% share |
| Worldpay | 51 | 2.6% | 7 | 15.7% | 7-person wholesalers, 2.6% share |
| Square | 41 | 2.1% | — | — | View these companies in Firmbase → |
| Opayo | 27 | 1.4% | — | — | View these companies in Firmbase → |
| Authorize.net | 24 | 1.2% | — | — | View these companies in Firmbase → |
| GoCardless | 17 | 0.9% | — | — | View these companies in Firmbase → |
| Recharge | 16 | 0.8% | — | — | View these companies in Firmbase → |
| Google Pay | 13 | 0.7% | — | — | View these companies in Firmbase → |
| Ideal4Finance | 11 | 0.6% | — | — | View these companies in Firmbase → |
| Afterpay | 9 | 0.5% | — | — | View these companies in Firmbase → |
| Plaid | 7 | 0.4% | — | — | View these companies in Firmbase → |
Systems detected below the page threshold appear with counts only; their full lists are available in the Firmbase app.
Market leader by size
The leading Payments system shifts with company size: among UK Wholesale with under 10 employees, PayPal leads at 41.6% of the 1,328 with a detectable system; among UK Wholesale with 10–50 employees, PayPal leads at 44% of the 595 with a detectable system; and among UK Wholesale with over 50 employees, PayPal leads at 52.9% of the 51 with a detectable system.
Under 10 employees
41.6% of band
Under 10 employees is the largest detected band, with 1,328 wholesale companies. PayPal has the highest share at 41.6%, with the remaining usage spread across the wider 14-system market.
10–50 employees
44% of band
10–50 employees covers 595 detected wholesale companies. PayPal remains ahead at 44.0%, while Stripe, PayU and the rest of the market compete for the balance.
Over 50 employees
52.9% of band
Over 50 employees is much smaller, with 51 detected wholesale companies. PayPal’s share is highest in this band at 52.9%, leaving a relatively narrow base for other systems.
How Payments usage is detected
Company data
Detected companies are joined to UK Companies House records and XBRL accounts data. Revenue and headcount figures come from the most recent filed accounts; where the company has not filed, values are estimated using a model trained on filed history and peer benchmarks and are labelled as estimates.
Detection
Firmbase crawls the public website of actively-trading UK companies and fingerprints the technologies present: tracking scripts, embedded forms, chat widgets, CMS markers and similar signatures. A company is included in this list when one or more of the technology's signatures are found on its site; closely-related variants of the same product are grouped under one name. Detection covers what is visible on the public web — a company using the technology purely internally, with no website footprint, will not appear. Counts are therefore a conservative floor, not a ceiling.
Freshness
Websites are re-crawled on a rolling basis and the underlying company data is refreshed from Companies House continuously; filings appear within days of submission. The list and its statistics are regenerated when the detected cohort moves meaningfully. You can see the last-updated timestamp near the top of the page.
All product names are trademarks of their respective owners. Firmbase is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any trademark owner.
UK Wholesale by Payments
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Frequently asked questions
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