Who has the cheapest merchant fees? Nobody, in the sense the question intends. Cost depends on your volume, your average ticket, your card mix and your category, so the cheapest provider for a high ticket online seller is often the expensive one for a busy counter. Anyone naming a winner sight unseen is guessing.
Who has the cheapest merchant fees? Why the answer moves
Two businesses on the same provider, in the same month, can pay very different effective costs. Part of every card sale is a fixed amount and part is a percentage, so a shop averaging small baskets feels the fixed part hardest while a brand selling large orders feels the percentage.
On top of that sits interchange, which the card networks publish and set, and which varies by card type and by whether the card was present. Visa, Mastercard, Amex and Discover each publish their own schedules. Your provider did not write them and cannot discount them. What your provider actually competes on is the mark up above that, plus every fixed item on the schedule.
So the honest version of the question is not who is cheapest. It is what will this specific arrangement cost my specific business over a year.
Normalise the quotes before you compare them
Two quotes are almost never in the same units. Put them in the same units yourself:
- Take one real month of your own processing: total volume, transaction count, and the split between card present and card not present.
- Apply each quote to those numbers. Percentage plus per transaction, both, on the real count.
- Add every fixed monthly item: account fee, statement fee, gateway, PCI programme, monthly minimum shortfall, batch fees.
- Add hardware, whether purchased or leased, spread across the term of the agreement.
- Add the exit: early termination, equipment return, and any lease that runs past the processing contract.
- Divide by your volume. Now both quotes are one comparable number.
Most owners find the ranking flips somewhere between step three and step five. That flip is the entire point of the exercise, and our pricing page walks through the same drivers in more detail.
The things that move your cost more than the provider does
Your average ticket. Raising it changes the fixed portion of your cost per dollar more than most negotiations will.
Your card present share. Moving sales to the counter, where the card is physically read, changes the schedule your transactions qualify for.
Your dispute rate. Nothing on a quote survives a chargeback problem. Clear product descriptions, a visible refund policy, a recognisable billing descriptor and prompt shipping do more for your annual cost than shaving the mark up.
What cheap costs you in a restricted category
For a hemp, CBD, kratom or smoke shop business, the cheapest published pricing usually belongs to platforms that restrict the category outright, and boarding there anyway is not a saving. It is a deferred cost with interest.
The bill arrives as held settlement, a closed account, and a scramble to open a new one with a closure on your record. That is more expensive than any mark up difference you were chasing. The reasons the big platforms behave that way are structural, and we set them out on what makes CBD high risk.
Dedicated underwriting is not free, and it is not meant to be. What it buys is an acquirer who approved you knowing your catalogue, which is the difference our CBD merchant account page is about. If kratom is part of your mix, that has its own underwriting profile, covered on our kratom merchant account page.
How to test any quote in ten minutes
Ask for the schedule split into interchange, assessments and mark up. Ask which acquiring bank sponsors the account. Ask for every fixed fee on one page. Ask the term, the notice period and the cost of leaving. Ask whether a reserve applies and what releases it.
A provider who answers all five in writing has told you how the relationship will run. A provider who answers with a single blended number and urgency has told you that too. More of the common questions are answered on our FAQ page.
Frequently asked questions
Is interchange plus always cheaper than a bundled rate? Not always, but it is always more legible. It shows you what your provider is charging for their own part, which makes a bundled quote comparable to it. Legibility is worth more over a year than a small difference in the headline.
Why will you not name the cheapest provider? Because it would be a made up answer. Cost depends on numbers only you have, and any provider quoting you before seeing them is pricing a stranger. The figure that matters is the written schedule attached to your own approval, and nobody can produce that from a web page.
Should I switch for a lower rate? Only after you have normalised both offers on your own month of processing and priced the exit from your current agreement. A saving that is smaller than your termination cost is not a saving, and stability has real value in this category.
Do the card networks set what I pay? They set interchange and assessments, which is a large share of it, and they publish those schedules. The rest is your provider. That split is why asking for the schedule broken into three parts is the most useful question you can put to anyone.
What if my current processor has just raised my rate? Ask what triggered it and what your agreement allows on notice. Then run the same comparison rather than reacting. If the account is being repriced because your category was reclassified, that is a different problem, and high risk processing explains it.