Keepz Review (2026): Pricing, Features & Honest Verdict

TLDR

Keepz is a Georgian merchant payments platform that turns a phone into a terminal, accepting QR, NFC tap-to-phone, cards, Apple Pay, open banking, and crypto in one app with no hardware. It is innovative but Georgia-focused. Best for: Georgian and South Caucasus merchants. Price: free to start, merchant fees custom. Rating: 6.2/10.

What is Keepz?

Keepz is a payment-acceptance platform built for merchants in Georgia. It lets a business take payments through a QR code or NFC tap-to-phone without buying a traditional point-of-sale terminal. It accepts bank cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, open banking pay-by-bank, and cryptocurrency, all from one app. We checked and confirmed it is live and active, with published iOS and Android apps, live developer documentation, and recent press coverage. This is a real merchant product, not a dead project or a simple consumer wallet.

It is operated by Fingerprint Finance Inc. and headquartered in Tbilisi, Georgia. It was co-founded by Papuna Lezhava, a former Vice-Governor of the National Bank of Georgia, which gives it unusual regulatory credibility for a startup. The app first appeared around 2021, though the exact founding date is not definitively confirmed in primary sources. By early 2025, Keepz reported roughly 20,000 merchants and more than 100,000 payers, which is meaningful penetration for a country the size of Georgia.

The idea is to remove hardware and friction from accepting payments. A merchant displays a QR code or taps a phone, and the customer pays without downloading an app or registering. For a small shop, cafe, or delivery business, that is a low-barrier way to start taking modern payments, and the open banking and crypto rails set it apart from plain card acceptance. In a market where many small merchants still rely on cash or a bank-issued card reader, an app that bundles every payment method into one free download is a meaningful step forward.

What Are Keepz’s Key Features?

QR and tap-to-phone acceptance

The core feature is terminal-free acceptance. A merchant shows or displays a QR code, or uses NFC tap-to-phone, and the customer pays. The payer needs no app download and no registration, which removes a common point of friction at checkout. Turning an ordinary phone into a terminal means a merchant can start accepting payments without investing in dedicated hardware, which lowers the cost of going cashless.

Open banking and instant transfers

Keepz was the first company in Georgia to acquire an open banking license, and it launched Georgia’s first 24/7 instant bank-to-bank transfer service in October 2025. Open banking pay-by-bank can move money more cheaply than card rails because it sidesteps card-network fees. For merchants, that is a path to lower-cost acceptance, and it is a genuine differentiator against rivals that only do cards.

Crypto payments

Keepz accepts cryptocurrency including USDT, Bitcoin, and Ethereum. It powered a December 2024 Georgian government pilot that let residents pay taxes in digital assets, one of the first such programs globally, and it has been integrated by the crypto exchange Cryptal for top-ups. For merchants who want to accept crypto without building their own integration, this is a ready-made option that few competitors match. How useful it is depends entirely on whether your customers actually want to pay in crypto.

All-in-one rails and bank distribution

Keepz combines bank cards, an integrated mobile bank, Apple Pay, Google Pay, open banking, and crypto in a single app with real-time settlement. It is also distributed partly through banks, for example as the Keepz QR Terminal offered by Credo Bank. That bank distribution lends trust and reach, and consolidating so many payment methods in one place means a merchant does not stitch together separate tools for cards, transfers, and crypto.

How Much Does Keepz Cost?

Keepz is free to download and start. There is no upfront cost to set up merchant acceptance and no hardware to buy, which is part of the appeal. The company makes money on per-transaction merchant fees rather than monthly subscriptions, so your cost scales with what you actually process rather than a flat monthly bill.

The honest answer on those fees is that they are not published. Keepz does not have a public merchant pricing page, so the fee structure is effectively custom pricing that you confirm by contacting the company. Its marketing references low or even zero commission and notes that the merchant can choose who pays the fee, the business or the customer. One search source cited a 0.5% fee capped at a small amount on certain transactions, but we could not verify that against a primary Keepz source, so we will not state a specific rate as fact. Treat pricing as free to start with custom, contact-sales fee rates.

For comparison, transparent global rivals make their fees public. SumUp charges around 1.69% per transaction with no monthly fee, and myPOS runs roughly 1.1% to 1.6% plus a small fixed amount per transaction. Local Georgian bank PSPs such as TBC Pay and Bank of Georgia negotiate merchant acquiring rates per merchant rather than publishing them, much like Keepz. So Keepz is not unusual in the local market for keeping fees private, but it is less transparent than the international SoftPOS players a merchant might compare it against.

Who is Keepz Best For?

Use Keepz if you are a merchant in Georgia or the wider South Caucasus, such as a retail shop, cafe, salon, or delivery business, who wants low-cost, terminal-free payment acceptance. It is an especially good fit if you specifically want to accept open banking pay-by-bank or crypto alongside cards, since few rivals bundle all of those. The bank distribution and regulatory pedigree add trust for cautious local merchants.

Skip Keepz if you operate outside Georgia, because availability is regional and the stated expansion to Turkey and Italy is planned rather than confirmed live. Skip it too if transparent, published fees are a priority for you, since you have to contact sales to learn your rate. The thin review base, with an iOS rating around 4.0 from a small number of reviews and some complaints about held funds and slow support, is also worth weighing before you route real revenue through it.

Best Keepz Alternatives

SumUp

SumUp is a widely available SoftPOS and tap-to-pay provider that also supports QR acceptance. Its pricing is transparent at about 1.69% per transaction with no monthly fee, which makes budgeting easy. It operates regionally and globally, so it is a strong pick if you want a known international brand with public fees. The trade-off is that it does not offer the open banking and crypto rails Keepz bundles.

myPOS

myPOS offers card machines plus a Glass tap-to-pay app and QR acceptance, with fees around 1.1% to 1.6% plus a small fixed amount per transaction and no monthly fee. It is a good fit for merchants who want both physical card machines and phone-based acceptance from one vendor. Like SumUp, it is transparent on pricing but lacks Keepz’s open banking and crypto options.

TBC Pay and Bank of Georgia

The incumbent Georgian bank payment services, including TBC Pay and Bank of Georgia’s PayBox, are the most direct local rivals. They offer QR transfers and merchant acquiring, with TBC’s QR tip transfers advertised at no transaction fee and standard acquiring rates negotiated per merchant. Choose these if you already bank with them and want acceptance tied to your existing relationship, accepting that crypto and unified open banking are weaker than Keepz.

Final Verdict: Is Keepz Worth It?

Keepz earns a 6.2 because it is genuinely innovative for its market but narrow and opaque in ways that matter. Bundling QR, tap-to-phone, cards, open banking, and crypto in one free-to-start app with no hardware is a real achievement, and the open banking license plus instant transfer service show this is a serious payments company, not a gimmick. For a Georgian merchant who wants modern, low-cost acceptance, it is worth a close look.

The reasons it scores in the low sixes are the lack of published pricing, the thin and partly negative review base, and the tight regional focus. A merchant cannot easily compare Keepz on fees without contacting sales, which is a real friction when transparent rivals publish their rates openly. The small number of app reviews, some alleging held funds and slow support, means you should test it with modest volume first and confirm settlement times before you depend on it. If you are in Georgia and value open banking or crypto acceptance, Keepz is a strong regional choice and worth setting up. If you want transparent fees or operate outside the region entirely, SumUp or myPOS are the safer, more proven bets today.