Pay by Link is the simplest way for a UK business to take a card payment without a terminal, a checkout page, or the customer's card details in earshot. Send a one-time URL by email or SMS, the customer pays on a secure hosted page, and the money settles into your bank the next working day. It is one of the most under-used tools in UK payments — and one of the easiest to deploy.

What Pay by Link actually is

A Pay by Link is a unique, single-use payment URL generated from your gateway dashboard. You set the amount, an optional reference, and (in some cases) an expiry. The customer receives the link, clicks it, and lands on a hosted checkout page operated by your gateway — branded for your business, secured by 3-D Secure 2, and PCI-compliant by default. Your business never sees, types, or stores the card number.

Compared to a Virtual Terminal (where the merchant keys card details into a dashboard while the customer reads them out), Pay by Link keeps the card data entirely in the customer's hands. That is the right answer for compliance, for fraud risk, and for customer comfort — most cardholders are now actively reluctant to read a card number aloud.

When to use it

  • Phone orders and bookings — instead of taking card details verbally over the phone, send the link mid-call and the customer pays before they hang up.
  • Tradespeople invoicing on completion — finish the job, send the link by SMS from the van, get paid the same day.
  • Professional services and consultants — attach the link to your PDF invoice so clients can pay without bank transfer admin.
  • Deposits and pre-authorisations — restaurants, hotels, salons, and events can secure a booking with a small upfront charge before the customer arrives.
  • Late or chasing payments — when an emailed invoice has gone unpaid, switching to a click-to-pay link removes the friction of "let me just find my card reader".

What good Pay by Link looks like

Not all Pay by Link implementations are equal. Before you commit to a provider, check that yours offers:

  • Branded checkout — your logo, your colours, your domain (or a clearly co-branded one). A generic "PayHubXYZ" page tanks conversion.
  • SMS as well as email delivery — SMS click-through rates are roughly 5× higher than email for short-form payments under £500.
  • Real-time tracking — see when the customer opened the link, when they entered details, and when the payment captured. Useful for chasing slow payers.
  • 3-D Secure 2 by default — non-negotiable since the UK rollout completed. If your provider treats 3-D Secure as optional, walk away.
  • Refunds from the original transaction — full or partial, without a separate process.

What it costs — and where the catch usually hides

Pay by Link is almost always a card-not-present (CNP) transaction. CNP rates are typically a little higher than card-present contactless because the fraud risk is higher and the interchange fee reflects that. Expect a fair UK rate to sit roughly 10–20 bps above your in-store contactless rate, depending on your pricing model.

Where merchants get caught out is on the per-link fee some legacy providers charge — £0.10–£0.50 per Pay by Link in addition to the processing fee, regardless of whether the customer pays. At any reasonable volume that adds up quickly. Modern UK gateways (Monek included) bundle Pay by Link into the standard rate with no per-link surcharge.

How Monek's Pay by Link works

Pay by Link is included free on every UK Monek account, with no per-link fees, no setup charges, and the same blended or IC++ rate as your other channels. Generate a link in seconds from the Monek Portal or via our API, deliver it by email or SMS from inside the dashboard, and track every step until capture. 3-D Secure 2 is on by default, and refunds work directly from the original transaction row.

If you want to see how Pay by Link could replace 30 minutes of card-details-over-the-phone every day for your team, our team will set up a demo account and walk you through it — no contract, no commitment, no card needed to evaluate.