Credit card processing fee calculator

What the credit card processing fee calculator is working out

The number that matters is the last one: your effective rate. It is the total you paid in a month divided by the total you processed, expressed as a percentage. It folds the quoted rate, the per-transaction fee, the monthly fees and the annual fees into one figure you can carry from one quote to the next.

A quoted rate on its own tells you very little, because two processors quoting the same percentage can cost a small store meaningfully different amounts once the fixed fees and the per-transaction charge are in. Effective rate is the only comparison that survives that.

Where do I find these numbers on my statement?

1. Monthly card volume: the total of all card sales for the month, usually labelled gross sales, total volume or amount processed.
2. Transaction count: the number of card sales, often shown as items or transaction count. If your statement gives it per card brand, add them together.
3. Percentage rate and per-transaction fee: on a flat-rate statement these are the headline numbers. On an interchange-plus statement you want the markup above interchange, plus interchange itself if you are comparing total cost.
4. Fixed monthly fees: statement fee, monthly minimum, PCI fee, gateway fee, batch fees. Add every recurring line that is not a percentage.
5. Annual fees: divide any yearly charge, such as an annual PCI or compliance fee, by twelve.

If your statement does not let you find these six numbers in under ten minutes, that is itself worth noticing. A statement that is hard to read is usually hard to read for a reason.

Why is my effective rate higher than the rate I was quoted?

Because the quote was a percentage and your bill is a percentage plus everything else. Three things widen the gap, and all three hit small stores hardest.

• Per-transaction fees. A fixed cost per sale is a large share of a small ticket. A store with a six dollar average basket feels a per-transaction fee far more than one with a sixty dollar basket.
• Fixed monthly fees. A statement fee and a monthly minimum cost the same whether you processed ten thousand or fifty thousand, so the lower your volume the more they weigh.
• Downgrades. Transactions that do not qualify for the rate you were quoted get billed at a higher one. Keyed entries, cards without address verification and some card types are the usual causes.

This is why we ask stores to run the arithmetic on their own statement rather than trusting a quoted number. The mechanics of the fee types are in our guide to what credit card processing fees actually cover.

What counts as a good effective rate?

There is no single answer, and anyone who gives you one without asking about your business is guessing. It depends on your average ticket, your card mix, whether the card is present, your industry, and your monthly volume.

What is universally true is that the comparison has to be like for like. Run this calculator on your current statement, then run it again on every quote you receive, using the same volume and the same transaction count. If a processor will not give you the numbers to do that, you have learned something useful about them.

We do not publish a rate here, and that is deliberate. There is no rate card in writing behind this brand, so any figure we printed would be invented. What we will do is put the whole schedule in writing for your store before you commit, which is what our pricing page explains.

What the calculator deliberately leaves out

• Hardware. A terminal or register is a separate cost, one-time if you buy and recurring if you lease. It is covered in what a POS system costs.
• Chargeback fees, which only apply when a dispute happens and vary by processor.
• Early termination charges, which are a contract question rather than a monthly one.
• Cash discount or dual pricing programs, which change who pays the fee rather than what it is. That is a separate decision, covered on our cash discount and dual pricing page.

Leaving these out is the point. The calculator answers one question cleanly rather than five questions vaguely.

How to use this when you are shopping processors

1. Run your current statement through it first. That is your baseline, and most stores have never calculated it.
2. Ask every processor for the full fee schedule in writing, not a headline rate.
3. Run each quote through with the same volume and transaction count you used for your baseline.
4. Compare effective rates, then compare contract terms, then compare what happens if you leave.
5. Re-run it six months after you switch, on a real statement, to check the quote survived contact with reality.

That last step catches more than anything else on this page. If you want a second read on a statement, send us what you are paying now and we will walk through it with you.