Tied house or free house — which one decides your card fees

Independent UK pubs split into two groups that look the same from the street and behave very differently the moment you try to change your payments setup.

If you are tied to a pub company — Punch, Stonegate, Greene King, Wetherspoons, Mitchells & Butlers, City Pub Co, and a long tail of smaller operators — your processor is usually decided for you. Switching might be off the table even if your statement is twice what it should be. If you are a free house, the whole market is open to you, and most free houses we look at are paying significantly more than they need to.

The first thing to know is which of the two you are.

How to tell, in two minutes

A few quick checks:

• Look at your beer supply contract. A tied agreement names the pubco/brewery and lists the products you must buy from them. If you signed one, you are tied at least for beer.
• Look at your lease. Tied leases often include clauses about EPOS, card acceptance and "approved suppliers". If the lease names a specific processor, that is who you are using regardless of pricing.
• Look at the receipt printed by your terminal. The acquirer name is usually the small print at the bottom. If it matches a name on your lease or your weekly beer invoice, the answer is "tied for payments too".
• Look at your last brewery rebate or "incentive" statement. Some pubcos reduce their take if you stay on their processor. That's a tie even if nothing in writing forces it.

If none of the above applies, you are almost certainly a free house and the rest of this post is about you.

Why this matters more than the headline rate

A free house picking its own payments setup has three things a tied pub doesn't:

1. Negotiable pricing. A live competitive market means a written interchange-plus quote with no rate-creep clauses is achievable. Tied processors don't negotiate.
2. Choice of hardware. Clover Flex, Clover Mini, Clover Duo — the right shape for the way your bar actually runs. Tied pubs get whatever the pubco buys in bulk.
3. Control of your data. Reporting flows back to your own accounting software, not the pubco's central system.

A free house on Dojo or Paymentsense is leaving 20–40% on the table compared to a properly-priced interchange-plus deal. That number is what the savings quote actually looks like for most of the free houses we work with — the exact figure depends on your card mix and ticket size.

Before you switch

Two things to check before signing anything:

• Your existing contract. Most Dojo and Paymentsense pub contracts have exit clauses. Read them. We will read them with you if helpful — there is no point quoting a saving you cannot take.
• Your card-not-present revenue. Most free houses run a small but real amount of catering or function bookings on cards over the phone or via email. Card-not-present needs to be declared during onboarding. Not a blocker, just a thing to flag early.

If the lease, the beer contract and the receipt all point to "you choose your processor", the rest is fifteen minutes of work and a statement upload.