Paylinks vs Merchant.app
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Paylinks
Easily accept online payments by creating payment links. Share these links via email, messaging, or social media, allowing customers to pay quickly with their preferred method. Ideal for small businesses and freelancers for low-value transactions.
- Create payment requests
- Generate shareable payment links
- Accept payments via PayPal, Stripe, Square
- No POS system required
- Ideal for small-value payments
- Send links via email, messaging, social media
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Accept online payments from your customers with ease through payment links: simply create a payment request, generate a link through the app and share it through any medium (e.g., email, messaging apps, social media). Your customers can then follow the link to make a quick payment using their preferred payment method. We support PayPal, Stripe and Square as payment gateways. Paylinks is ideal for accepting small-value payments (such as for a yoga lesson or entry ticket to a social dance event): you don’t need any special device like a point-of-sale system or a payment terminal, and you don’t have to send invoices. Paylinks is a product of Hiveage Inc. We make online invoicing and payments fast and easy for small businesses.
Merchant.app
This app streamlines payment processing for businesses, allowing for quick transactions via terminal, text, or email. It offers a real-time dashboard to monitor all business transactions and refunds, ensuring secure and efficient customer payments.
- Process payments via terminal, text, or email
- Lightning-fast transactions
- Customer payments via phone or email
- Real-time transaction dashboard
- Refund tracking
- Industry-leading data security
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An ideal system for businesses, Merchant Platforms will help you process your payments and impress your customers through terminal, text or email payment prompts and lightning-fast transactions. Customers can make payments instantly through their phone or email without the hassle of credit card authorization forms. A dashboard with real-time updates helps you keep track of all the transactions and refunds within your business. Merchants and customers can rest assured that each payment is kept safe and secure through industry-leading data security standards.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Merchant.app at 50% against Paylinks's 0%. Merchant.app also leads on rating (4.5 vs 3.7). Paylinks's advantage is iOS requirement (12.0 vs 15.1). On price, ratings volume, update cadence and ads there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Merchant.app holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 3.7. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 3 and 8 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 0% of Paylinks's written reviews are positive against 50% of Merchant.app's.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 2 weeks. Both last shipped on October 24, 2026.
| Parameter | Paylinks | Merchant.app |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.7 (3 ratings) | 4.5 (8 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 0.0% of reviews | 50.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 3 | 8 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks | Every 2 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 12.0 — better | 15.1 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 58 MB | 160 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Hiveage Inc. | Merchant Platforms, Inc. |
Customer experience
Paylinks
Merchant.app
In-app purchases
Paylinks
No in-app purchases
Merchant.app
No in-app purchases
