EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorPaymentsHeadquarters: GB

SumUp: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

SumUp is a payments company that offers merchants card readers, a point-of-sale system, payment links, an online store builder and a business account. Businesses accept chip, magnetic-stripe and contactless card payments, and third parties can integrate card acceptance into their own products through SDKs and APIs. The service is delivered as a combination of payment hardware and software.

SumUp is headquartered in London. Its UK entity, SumUp Payments Limited, is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. For its European business SumUp also operates SumUp Limited in Ireland, an e-money institution regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland, and SumUp EU Payments, UAB in Lithuania. According to SumUp, personal data for its European business is stored within the European Economic Area; transfers to group companies or service providers outside the EEA or the UK take place under contractual safeguards. The company is privately held, with financial investors. For European organisations this means the group sits outside the EU, while the European service is provided through EU-licensed entities.

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Sovereignty score
42 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-250
    Headquartered outside the EU (GB)
  • Data residency SOV-350
    Hosting inside and outside Europe (EU, UK)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-340
    Key management with a non-European vendor
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-630
    Closed source, runtime with the vendor

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked July 2, 2026
HeadquartersGB (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionYes — found adequate by the European CommissionVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingEU, UKVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Hosting signalCLOUDFLARENET - Cloudflare, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
CategoryPayments
TypeProduct
Websitesumup.com ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to SumUp

The European alternatives to SumUp come from our knowledge base of over 6,200 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

99 European Payments vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with SumUp

SumUp is headquartered in GB, outside the EU. Contracts and data therefore also fall under non-European law. The GDPR applies through contractual terms, but in a conflict with local legislation you have less certainty than with a European vendor.

SumUp hosts data in EU, UK. Exactly what stays within the EU — and what does not — is defined by the vendor's data processing agreement and sub-processor list, not by a setting you control yourself; check those documents for the precise scope, including backups, logs and support access.

SumUp is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs SumUp together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to SumUp?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to SumUp include Bancontact Pay, Flatpay and iDEAL / Wero. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to SumUp?

Our list of EU alternatives to SumUp is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.

Is SumUp GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

SumUp is headquartered in GB (OTHER) and hosts data in EU, UK. The vendor states it is GDPR-compliant, but the data falls under non-EU jurisdiction. For full EU data residency the EU alternatives on this page usually offer more certainty.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on July 2, 2026.

Sources

This record was checked via the vendor's website and legal notice during the full audit of June and July 2026. Source links have been recorded per record since 20 September 2026.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Digital sovereignty in Payments

Payments: Payment services, payment gateways, online payments and financial transactions. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

Also in this category

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8 European alternatives to SumUp — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score