The real math behind your payment fees, line by line
How to split a blended rate into its parts using nothing but your own statement, and which lines are actually negotiable.
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Know what your checkout actually costs
We read merchant statements for a living and publish the arithmetic. Set your numbers once, save the profile, and every future quote gets priced against it.
Built on published rates and federal records
STRIPESHOPIFYCFPBVISA RULESMASTERCARD
Your store profilenothing saved
InterchangeScheme
MarginFixed
Cross border
Effective rate
3.54%
$2.41 per order
Bill a year
$34,656
at this volume
Terms of use, roughly. This is what we see reading merchant statements. Your contract is not one we have read. Get your own adviser onto it before switching anything.
Save once. Next quote gets priced against this baseline automatically.
Why anyone reads us
What follows every other fee guide skips
1
The curve, not the quote
2.9 percent plus 30 cents costs 5.40 percent on a $12 basket and 2.98 percent on a $400 one. Same contract, double the cost, and no comparison table shows it.
2
The platform surcharge
Shopify adds 2 percent on Basic down to 0.2 percent on Plus for using an outside gateway. That single row decides most processor arguments before they start.
3
The risk no fee table prices
37,516 federal complaints about payment companies in a year, and 6,500 of them are money that exists and will not move yet.
Scheme fees and payout windows move twice a year
The rates quoted on this site come from published schedules, and those schedules get revised. When an interchange band, a scheme fee or a settlement window changes, we tell you which one and by how much.
One address, no list swaps, and nothing is sent unless a figure on this site actually changed. This is our own reading of public sources and not advice on your own situation.
What we publish, and what it is built on
37,516Complaints we pulled and sorted ourselves, one full year
9Order values in our effective rate curve
RegularHow often we recheck published rate pages
0Affiliate links, referral fees or sponsored rankings
Every fee guide online copies the same four sentences and none of them match a real statement.
the settlements deskOne desk reading statements and the public complaint file. Rates here are worked out from arithmetic you can repeat on your own statement, and no processor pays to appear.
Latest from the desk
All articles →How instant payouts work
Changing the schedule does not make money available sooner. There are 2 clocks and most shops adjust the wrong one.
Read it →The two headline rates are identical to the cent, and the number that decides the choice sits three rows below them
Shopify Payments on Basic and Stripe both charge 2.9 per cent plus 30 cents. The third party transaction fee adds 2 per cent on top for anybody else, and the plan you are on decides how much of it you pay.
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VAMP adds TC40 fraud reports to disputes and counts by the item. Mastercard divides this month by last month. Both formulas are public and neither matches a merchant dashboard.
Read it →Debit card interchange fee cap: the ceiling on your debit traffic, and the routing choice that is legally yours
21 cents plus 5 basis points is the ceiling, and the rule names card-not-present as a transaction type that must run on 2 unaffiliated networks.
Read it →Does 3D Secure hurt conversion
The switch is not in your checkout. It is a rolling 90 day fraud rate that belongs to your provider.
Read it →Shopify Payments or Stripe, by money not by marketing
They share plumbing and price differently, plus the awkward detail that Shopify does not publish its card rates in one place.
Read it →Backup payment processor: the afternoon a quarter that prevents the bad fortnight
Both networks count disputes, and they divide by different months. What that does to a shop that loses 3 hours of trading.
Read it →Price your next quote before you sign it
Save your store profile, come back with any new offer, and the difference over a year appears in one line.
Start with the fee breakdown →the settlements desk
One desk reading statements and the public complaint file. Rates here are worked out from arithmetic you can repeat on your own statement, and no processor pays to appear.