Payment Processor Comparison for SMBs
- Every figure carries a source tier. VENDOR is from the vendor's own page. REPORTED is from a named third party. NOT PUBLISHED means the vendor doesn't publish it, and the page says what to ask for instead. How the tiers work
- A blank cell here has to earn its place. Five that look unpublished aren't: Stripe and Shopify US rates, Clover's full vertical rate card, Toast's two processing percentages, Lightspeed's 2.6% + 10c. Every one of them is published and merely easy to miss. A blank cell is a dead end for a merchant building a budget.
- You can't rank interchange-plus against flat rate without assuming a card mix. Ours is published in full at Cost Model Assumptions. Pass-through of 1.03% + $0.178 card-present and 1.50% + $0.172 online. Every verdict below depends on it. If your mix differs, the answers move.
- Across 24 scenarios (2 channels x 3 ticket sizes x 4 volumes), Helcim wins 20, PayPal Zettle wins 3, Stax wins 1, and Square wins none. The Zettle wins are all small-ticket card-present. The Stax win is a single online cell.
- The volume threshold is a myth. The ticket threshold is real. Helcim and Square both charge $0/month, so there's no volume gate. Ticket size decides card-present. Helcim's published markup beats Square's flat rate above roughly a $9 ticket. Below it, Square. On premium and commercial cards, Square at any ticket.
- Stax's volume bands are annual, not monthly. $99/mo covers up to $150,000 a year. A shop doing $20K/month is the $139 tier.
- What genuinely stays unpublished: Checkout.com, Global Payments and Nuvei (nothing at all, right down to their sitemaps), Adyen's actual rates (it labels its own indicative), Lightspeed's online rate, and the chargeback fee at Clover, Worldpay and Adyen. Toast and Shopify both turned out to publish one, at $15.
- Dispute costs differ more than card rates do. The whole published US span is $0 to $30. Square charges nothing. Helcim charges $0 if you win. PayPal's $15 dispute fee and $20 chargeback fee cover different channels. They never stack.
Key Fact: On this site's published card mix, Helcim is the cheapest option in 20 of the 24 scenarios modelled below. Those cover card-present and online, at $15/$50/$150 and $25/$75/$200 tickets, at $5K/$20K/$100K/$500K a month. PayPal Zettle wins the other three card-present cells, all at a $15 ticket up to $100,000 a month. Its 9 cent fixed fee is the lowest published here. Stax wins one online cell, at a $25 ticket and $20,000 a month. Square wins none of them on price. It does win outright on card mixes heavy in premium or commercial credit, and on card-present tickets below about $9.
Start Here: What Actually Wins
Read this before the tables. Every verdict comes from the published rates further down plus the published interchange assumption. The arithmetic is shown, so you can redo it with your own numbers.
No verdict here comes without its conditions. An unqualified "X is cheapest" isn't a claim that can be true. Channel, ticket size, monthly volume and card mix all move the answer. Sometimes they reverse it.
| If you're | The cheapest published option | On what condition |
|---|---|---|
| Card-present, ordinary consumer card mix, ticket above ~$9 | Helcim | IC + 0.40% + 8c with no monthly fee beats 2.6% + 15c above a $9.23 ticket. No volume gate, because neither charges a monthly fee |
| Card-present, ticket below ~$9 | Square against Helcim, PayPal Zettle against both | Small tickets reward a small fixed fee. Zettle's 2.29% + 9c is lower than every Square plan at every ticket; Helcim only overtakes Zettle above a $19.53 ticket in the entry band |
| Card-present, heavy premium/commercial card mix | Square | Flat rate caps your downside when interchange itself is 2.1-2.3%. Helcim's all-in on a Signature Preferred card is 2.64%, above Square's 2.60%. See the card-mix maths |
| Card-present above roughly $58K-$70K/month | Stax, probably | 0% markup + 8c overtakes Helcim there, but only at Stax's published $199 floor. Above $250,000/year Stax publishes no ceiling, so this is the earliest possible crossover, not a promise |
| Online, ticket above ~$15, up to ~$22K-$36K/month | Helcim | Entry band is IC + 0.50% + 25c. It beats Square Free online above a $9.38 ticket, Braintree above $14.83, and both PayPal online products at every ticket. One exception: at a $25 ticket, Stax's published $99 and $139 tiers open two earlier windows, roughly $11,000-$12,500 and $15,400-$20,833 a month. See the sawtooth |
| Online, ticket below ~$15 | Braintree | The 29c fixed fee is the lowest of the ranked online options, and small orders are decided by the fixed fee. On a $10 order it's $0.58 against Helcim's $0.62 |
| Online above roughly $22K-$36K/month | Stax, probably | Crossover rises with ticket size: about $22.1K at a $25 ticket, $31.4K at $75, $36.2K at $200. Same $199-floor caveat. At a $25 ticket only, Stax also wins two fully published windows below that, at $11,000-$12,500 and $15,400-$20,833 a month |
| Online, developer-led, want a flat rate | Braintree | 2.89% + $0.29, verified in USD. Stripe's US rates aren't verified, so the two can't be ranked, but they're 1.25 cents apart on a $25 order using Stripe's Canadian figure |
| Online, want PayPal and Venmo natively | Braintree | Same ballpark as Stripe on price, and PayPal/Venmo are first-class rather than bolted on |
| On Shopify | Shopify Payments | Not because the rate is good, and the US rate isn't verified, but because Shopify charges a third-party gateway fee on every order if you use anything else |
| Restaurant or hardware-heavy retail | Clover Direct on rate | 2.3% + 10c restaurant, published, is the lowest card-present rate of the three POS platforms. Toast Traditional is 2.49% and Lightspeed retail 2.6% + 10c. Your reseller, contract term and hardware terms move all of this more than the rate does. Use the question list |
| Canadian | Moneris or Square | Moneris publishes CAD rates openly. Watch the CA$80 authorization chargeback handling fee |
Four things decide every verdict above, and comparison content gets all four wrong routinely:
- The interchange assumption. Plenty of comparison content assumes 1.80% + 10c card-present. That's not a blend of anything. It's roughly the rate for one card type, a consumer rewards credit card. It overstates card-present pass-through by 79 basis points, and all of that lands on the interchange-plus side of every comparison. The corrected blend and its full derivation are published.
- There's no "flat rate under $10K/month, interchange-plus over $10K/month" rule. It assumes a monthly fee Helcim doesn't charge. Volume is the wrong variable. Ticket size is the right one.
- Two different Stax crossovers get confused. One is where Stax passes flat-rate pricing. The other, much higher, is where Stax becomes cheapest overall. Helcim is usually still cheaper at the first. Both are below.
- Braintree isn't cheaper than Stripe above a $61 ticket. That breakeven needs 2.59% + $0.49. Braintree's own page says 2.89% + $0.29, verified 2026-08-02. There's no breakeven to compute, and Stripe's US rate isn't verified anyway.
Side-by-Side Pricing
How to read this table
- Flat-rate providers quote one all-in rate and keep the difference against interchange.
- Interchange-plus providers pass interchange through and add a published markup.
- Every figure came from the vendor's own page on the date shown. Nothing here is sourced from a blog, a comparison site, or a competitor.
| Provider | Model | Card-present | Online | Keyed / invoice | Monthly | Source, verified 2026-08-02 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Square | Flat | 2.6% + 15c (Free); 2.5% + 15c (Plus); 2.4% + 15c (Premium) | 3.3% + 30c (Free); 2.9% + 30c (Plus, Premium) | Keyed / card on file 3.5% + 15c. ACH via Invoices 1%, $1 min, $10 cap (Plus/Premium) | None on Free ("no monthly subscription costs"). Plus $49 and Premium $149, both per location | squareup.com/us/en/payments/our-fees |
| Stripe | Flat | Terminal 2.7% + $0.05 | 2.9% + $0.30 domestic | +0.5% manually entered; +1.5% international cards; +1% currency conversion (both inverted versus Canada); ACH 0.8% capped $5 | None. "Stripe does not charge setup fees, monthly fees, or any other hidden fees" | stripe.com/pricing, read from a US connection |
| Braintree (PayPal) | Flat | Not separately published | 2.89% + $0.29 cards and digital wallets | Not separately published. Non-USD +1%; cards issued outside the US +1% | Not published | paypal.com/us/enterprise/paypal-braintree-fees |
| PayPal | Flat | 2.29% + $0.09 (Zettle in person) | 3.49% + $0.49 PayPal Checkout; 2.99% + $0.49 standard card payments | Keyed 3.49% + $0.09. Invoicing 3.49% + $0.49 via Checkout or 2.99% + $0.49 via card. ACH 1% capped $10. International +1.50% | None for standard commercial accounts | paypal.com/us/business/paypal-business-fees |
| Shopify Payments | Flat | US: Basic 2.6% + 10c; Grow 2.5% + 10c; Advanced 2.4% + 10c; Plus "most competitive rates" | US: Basic 2.9% + 30c; Grow 2.7% + 30c; Advanced 2.5% + 30c | Not published separately | US: $39 / $105 / $399 monthly, or $29 / $79 / $299 annually. Plus from $2,300. Plus a third-party gateway fee of 2% / 1% / 0.6% / 0.2% by plan if you don't use Shopify Payments | shopify.com/pricing, read from a US connection |
| Helcim | Interchange-plus | IC + 0.40% + 8c ($0-50K/mo), stepping to IC + 0.15% + 6c ($1M-5M/mo) | IC + 0.50% + 25c ($0-50K/mo), stepping to IC + 0.15% + 15c ($1M-5M/mo) | Keyed billed at the online rate. ACH/EFT-PAD 0.5% + 25c capped $6. Interac 9c, 12c tap | $0. No setup, PCI, cancellation or statement fees | helcim.com/pricing |
| Stax | Subscription + interchange | IC + 0% markup + 8c | IC + 0% markup + 15c | Billed as card-not-present, IC + 15c | $99/mo up to $150,000 per year; $139/mo for $150,000-$250,000 per year; $199+/mo above $250,000 per year | staxpayments.com/pricing |
| Moneris (Canada, CAD) | Flat | CA$: 2.65% + $0.10 credit; Interac Debit $0.12 | CA$: 2.85% + $0.30 credit; Interac Debit $1.00 | Billed card-not-present, 2.85% + $0.30 CAD | No monthly subscription stated for Flat Rate. Minimum merchant discount rate CA$5. Moneris Go software fee CA$5. Paper statement CA$2 | moneris.com/en/pricing |
| Adyen | Interchange++ | Not published. Interchange++ plus $0.13 processing fee, indicative card markup 0.60% | Not published. Same model | Not published. Alipay $0.13 + 3%; SEPA Direct Debit $0.13 + EUR 0.27 | "We do not have monthly fees, set-up fees, integration fees or closure fees. We do have a minimum invoice depending on industry or business model." No amount attached | adyen.com/pricing |
| Checkout.com | Flat or Interchange++ | Not published | Not published | Not published | Not published. States no setup fees and no account maintenance fees | checkout.com/pricing |
| Clover (Fiserv) | Flat, but reseller-set in practice | Direct: 2.3% + 10c restaurant and QSR; 2.6% + 10c retail and services entry plans | Direct: 3.5% + 10c | 3.5% + 10c, same as online | $0 Starter, $29.95 Essentials, $84.95-$129.85 Growth. Rapid Deposit 1.75% | clover.com/pricing |
| Toast | Flat, two plans | 2.49% Traditional, 3.09% Pay-as-you-Go. Fixed cents reported at 15c, not published by Toast | 3.50% + 15c, reported by NerdWallet only. Toast publishes no CNP rate | Not published | $0 Starter Kit, $69 Point of Sale restaurant, $90 retail. Payroll +$9 per employee | pos.toasttab.com/shop/starter-kits and /pricing |
| Lightspeed | Subscription + processing | 2.6% + 10c retail (X-Series). No rate published for the restaurant product | Not published on any page | Not published | Retail $89 / $149 / $289. Restaurant $69 / $189 / $399. KDS $30 per screen | lightspeedhq.com/pos/retail/pricing |
Italicised figures in that table are REPORTED by a named third party rather than published by the vendor. Everything unmarked is VENDOR.
Each of these looks unpublished to anyone checking quickly. All five sit on the vendor's own site, verified 2026-08-02.
- Stripe's US card and Terminal rates. stripe.com resolves country by request IP, not by URL path, so /us/pricing and /en-us/pricing serve Canada too. Read from a US connection: 2.9% + $0.30 online, 2.7% + $0.05 Terminal. Two fees are inverted between the countries. International cards are +1.5% US against +0.8% Canada. Currency conversion is +1% US against +2% Canada.
- Shopify Payments' US plan rates. There's no /us/ path. The bare URL served to a US IP is the US card. And the "no per-transaction cents in person" claim is Canada only. The US charges 10 cents.
- Clover. A full rate card, vertical by vertical, at clover.com/pricing.
- Toast. The rates live on the shop pages. The pricing page says "Simple, flat rate" and gives no figure at all.
- Lightspeed. The real rate is 2.6% + 10c. The bare "1.5%" that turns up is an artefact, and the string "1.5" appears nowhere on the pricing page.
Still not published: Lightspeed's online rate, and its restaurant processing rate.
The Card-Mix Test, Not the Volume Test
The usual advice: flat rate until you hit some monthly volume, then switch to interchange-plus. That's true only when the interchange-plus provider charges a monthly fee you have to earn back. Helcim charges $0 a month. Square charges $0 a month on the Free plan. No fee to earn back, no threshold to cross. The comparison is per transaction. It turns on two things. What cards your customers hand you, and how big your average sale is.
The arithmetic. Take a ticket of size A, interchange of i% plus f cents, and network assessments of 0.14% + 2c:
Square (Free, card-present) = 0.026 x A + $0.15
Helcim (card-present, entry) = (i + 0.14% + 0.40%) x A + (f + $0.02 + $0.08)
Square costs more when (0.0206 - i) x A > (f - $0.05)
The 0.14% + 2c network assessment sits inside Helcim's line above, and it has to. Leave it out and you flatter interchange-plus, moving every breakeven down. Assessments are real. An interchange-plus merchant pays them visibly on top. A flat-rate merchant pays them invisibly inside the headline rate. Dropping them from one side is the easiest way to rig this comparison.
The 0.14% figure itself is unverified. Neither Visa nor Mastercard publishes assessments anywhere. So this site takes the conservative end of what's plausible, the end that makes interchange-plus look worse. Moving it between 0.10% and 0.25% changes none of the verdicts on this page.
These use the Visa card-present rates behind this site's cost model. All read from Visa's published schedule of 18 April 2026 and checked against Mastercard's of 17 April 2026:
| Card the customer hands you | Interchange | Helcim all-in | Helcim beats Square above a ticket of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regulated debit (large-bank) | 0.05% + $0.22 | 0.59% + $0.32 | $8.46 |
| Exempt debit (small-bank) | 0.80% + $0.15 | 1.34% + $0.25 | $7.94 |
| Exempt prepaid | 1.15% + $0.15 | 1.69% + $0.25 | $10.99 |
| Consumer credit, no rewards | 1.51% + $0.10 | 2.05% + $0.20 | $9.09 |
| Standard rewards credit | 1.65% + $0.10 | 2.19% + $0.20 | $12.20 |
| Premium rewards (Signature Preferred) | 2.10% + $0.10 | 2.64% + $0.20 | Never. Square is cheaper |
| Top consumer tier (Visa Infinite, MC World Elite) | 2.30% + $0.10 | 2.84% + $0.20 | Never. Square is cheaper |
| Commercial / business | 2.26% + $0.10 | 2.80% + $0.20 | Never. Square is cheaper |
Three rows say "never" for one reason. Helcim's all-in percentage already exceeds Square's 2.6% before ticket size enters it. Its fixed component is higher too. There's no crossover to find. On this site's blended mix the crossover lands at $9.23.
So a hair salon at a $45 ticket is cheaper on Helcim on essentially every sale. So is a restaurant at $60, on an ordinary consumer mix. That holds at any volume, because neither processor charges a monthly fee to amortise. A coffee shop at a $6 ticket is a different answer. Small tickets are exactly where the flat fixed fee wins, and that's the case people get wrong most often. For a B2B counter where half the cards are commercial, Square's flat rate is genuinely the better deal. A flat rate caps your exposure when interchange itself runs 2.3%.
Worked example, $50 regulated-debit sale in person:
- Square Free: 2.6% x $50 + $0.15 = $1.45
- Helcim entry tier: interchange (0.05% x $50 = $0.025, plus $0.22) + assessments (0.14% x $50 = $0.07, plus $0.02) + markup (0.40% x $50 = $0.20, plus $0.08) = $0.62
About 42% of the cost. The same sale on a commercial card flips it. Interchange $1.23, plus $0.09 of assessments, plus $0.28 of markup = $1.60 on Helcim against $1.45 on Square.
Those interchange figures are Visa's published US rates, not vendor rates. Your real mix will differ. Pull one month of statements. Find your actual blended interchange and your actual average ticket. Put both in the formula. Those two numbers settle it. Nothing else does.
None of this says Square is a bad buy. Square bundles a full POS, hardware and a payments account into one thing that works out of the box. Helcim sells terminals and invoicing, not a Square-style POS. If you pick Square, be clear about what you're buying. You're buying the POS. The processing is the price of it, not a bargain.
The 24 Scenarios
Two channels, three ticket sizes, four monthly volumes. Every cell comes from the published rates in the table above plus the published pass-through assumption. Subscriptions are amortised over the volume.
The formulas, so you can rebuild any cell:
flat rate = rate x V + fixed x N
interchange-plus = (pass-through% + markup%) x V
+ (pass-through cents + markup cents) x N
+ monthly subscription
where V = monthly volume and N = V / average ticket
One structural detail that's easy to miss. Helcim's bands key off MONTHLY volume. Stax's key off ANNUAL volume. A merchant doing $20,000 a month sits in Helcim's $0-50K band and Stax's $150K-250K-a-year band at once. Mixing those up is worth about a factor of twelve.
Card-present
| Ticket | Volume | Cheapest | Cost | Effective | Runner-up | Gap | Stax at its floor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $15 | $5,000 | PayPal Zettle | $144.50 | 2.89% | Helcim $157.50 | $13.00 | $236.50 on the $99 tier |
| $15 | $20,000 | PayPal Zettle | $578.00 | 2.89% | Helcim $630.00 | $52.00 | $689.00 on the $139 tier |
| $15 | $100,000 | PayPal Zettle | $2,890.00 | 2.89% | Helcim $2,933.33 | $43.33 | $2,949.00, unranked |
| $15 | $500,000 | Helcim | $14,083.33 | 2.82% | Zettle $14,450.00 | $366.67 | $13,949.00, unranked, would win by $134 |
| $50 | $5,000 | Helcim | $97.30 | 1.95% | Zettle $123.50 | $26.20 | $176.30 on the $99 tier |
| $50 | $20,000 | Helcim | $389.20 | 1.95% | Stax $448.20 | $59.00 | $448.20 on the $139 tier |
| $50 | $100,000 | Helcim | $1,776.00 | 1.78% | Zettle $2,470.00 | $694.00 | $1,745.00, unranked, would win by $31 |
| $50 | $500,000 | Helcim | $8,530.00 | 1.71% | Zettle $12,350.00 | $3,820.00 | $7,929.00, unranked, would win by $601 |
| $150 | $5,000 | Helcim | $80.10 | 1.60% | Zettle $117.50 | $37.40 | $159.10 on the $99 tier |
| $150 | $20,000 | Helcim | $320.40 | 1.60% | Stax $379.40 | $59.00 | $379.40 on the $139 tier |
| $150 | $100,000 | Helcim | $1,445.33 | 1.45% | Zettle $2,350.00 | $904.67 | $1,401.00, unranked, would win by $44 |
| $150 | $500,000 | Helcim | $6,943.33 | 1.39% | Zettle $11,750.00 | $4,806.67 | $6,209.00, unranked, would win by $734 |
Square Free wins nothing here. It places third of four in the three $5,000-a-month cells. That's only because Stax's subscription hasn't been amortised at that volume. In the other nine cells it's last. Square's rates haven't moved. The pass-through assumption above is what puts it there.
Online
| Ticket | Volume | Cheapest | Cost | Effective | Runner-up | Gap | Stax at its floor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $25 | $5,000 | Helcim | $184.40 | 3.69% | Braintree $202.50 | $18.10 | $238.40 on the $99 tier |
| $25 | $20,000 | Stax | $696.60 | 3.48% | Helcim $737.60 | $41.00 | $139 tier, genuinely ranked |
| $25 | $100,000 | Helcim | $3,338.00 | 3.34% | Braintree $4,050.00 | $712.00 | $2,987.00, unranked, would win by $351 |
| $25 | $500,000 | Helcim | $15,190.00 | 3.04% | Braintree $20,250.00 | $5,060.00 | $14,139.00, unranked, would win by $1,051 |
| $75 | $5,000 | Helcim | $128.13 | 2.56% | Braintree $163.83 | $35.70 | $195.47 on the $99 tier |
| $75 | $20,000 | Helcim | $512.53 | 2.56% | Stax $524.87 | $12.33 | $524.87 on the $139 tier |
| $75 | $100,000 | Helcim | $2,346.00 | 2.35% | Braintree $3,276.67 | $930.67 | $2,128.33, unranked, would win by $218 |
| $75 | $500,000 | Helcim | $10,896.67 | 2.18% | Braintree $16,383.33 | $5,486.67 | $9,845.67, unranked, would win by $1,051 |
| $200 | $5,000 | Helcim | $110.55 | 2.21% | Braintree $151.75 | $41.20 | $182.05 on the $99 tier |
| $200 | $20,000 | Helcim | $442.20 | 2.21% | Stax $471.20 | $29.00 | $471.20 on the $139 tier |
| $200 | $100,000 | Helcim | $2,036.00 | 2.04% | Braintree $3,035.00 | $999.00 | $1,860.00, unranked, would win by $176 |
| $200 | $500,000 | Helcim | $9,555.00 | 1.91% | Braintree $15,175.00 | $5,620.00 | $8,504.00, unranked, would win by $1,051 |
The $75 / $20,000 cell is the closest in the whole matrix, $12.33 apart. It flips to Stax at about $31,400 a month. Don't treat it as a clear win either way. Price both.
Above $250,000 a year, about $20,833 a month, Stax publishes its subscription as "$199+". No stated ceiling. Every figure in that column uses $199. That's the best case Stax could possibly offer, not a quote. Stax would win eleven of these cells at that floor, and it wins one more at a published tier. Twelve cells sit above $250,000 a year and are therefore unranked. The only one of those Stax would not win is a $15 card-present ticket at $100,000 a month. There PayPal Zettle's $2,890.00 still beats Stax's $2,949.00. That's a strong reason to get a Stax quote at $100K a month and above. It isn't a reason to believe the number before you have it in writing.
Who isn't in these 24 cells, and why. The matrix was computed before this round of rate verification. It covers Helcim, PayPal Zettle, Stax, Square Free and Braintree. It hasn't been recomputed. So it doesn't yet include the rates confirmed since: Stripe at 2.9% + 30c online and 2.7% + 5c Terminal, Shopify Payments at 2.9% + 30c online and 2.6% + 10c in person, Clover direct at 2.3% or 2.6% + 10c, Toast at 2.49% or 3.09%, Lightspeed at 2.6% + 10c, and Square Plus and Premium at $49 and $149 per location.
Where those would land, on the same pass-through assumption. Clover Direct's 2.3% + 10c is the second-cheapest flat card-present rate verified on this site. PayPal Zettle's 2.29% + 9c is lower on both components, so it's cheaper at every ticket. Shopify Basic and Lightspeed at 2.6% + 10c both sit five cents under Square Free at the same percentage. Stripe Terminal at 2.7% + 5c crosses Square Free at a $100 ticket. None of them displaces Helcim above a $9.23 ticket on an ordinary card mix. They're all flat rates, and the flat-rate-versus-interchange-plus argument doesn't turn on a tenth of a point.
Still genuinely unrankable: Checkout.com, Global Payments and Nuvei (nothing published, verified), Adyen (labels its own rates indicative and requires an unpublished minimum invoice), Moneris (CAD), Lightspeed online (not published), and Stax above $250,000 a year ("$199+").
The crossovers, with the arithmetic
Every one of these comes from setting two cost formulas equal and solving for the ticket. They're the boundaries where a verdict above flips.
| Comparison | Helcim band | Crossover ticket | Above it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Helcim vs Square Free, card-present | entry ($0-50K/mo) | $9.23 | Helcim |
| Helcim vs Square Free, card-present | $100-500K/mo | $7.42 | Helcim |
| Helcim vs Square Free, card-present | $500K-1M/mo | $6.42 | Helcim |
| Helcim vs PayPal Zettle, card-present | entry | $19.53 | Helcim |
| Helcim vs PayPal Zettle, card-present | $100-500K/mo | $15.64 | Helcim |
| Helcim vs PayPal Zettle, card-present | $500K-1M/mo | $13.96 | Helcim |
| Helcim vs Square Free, online | entry | $9.38 | Helcim |
| Helcim vs Square Free, online | $500K-1M/mo | $1.42 | Helcim |
| Helcim vs Braintree, online | entry | $14.83 | Helcim |
| Helcim vs Braintree, online | $500K-1M/mo | $2.81 | Helcim |
| Helcim vs either PayPal online product | any band | None exists | Helcim always. PayPal's 49c fixed fee is above Helcim's and its rate is higher too |
| PayPal Zettle vs any Square plan, card-present | not applicable | None exists | Zettle always. Lower rate and lower fixed fee |
| Braintree vs Stripe, online | not applicable | None exists | 1.25 cents apart on a $25 order, and Stripe's US rate is unverified anyway |
Worked example for the first row, so the method is visible:
Square Free = 0.026 x A + $0.15
Helcim entry = (1.03% + 0.40%) x A + ($0.178 + $0.08)
= 0.0143 x A + $0.258
0.026A + 0.15 = 0.0143A + 0.258
0.0117A = 0.108
A = $9.23
Card-present, Adyen's indicative 0.60% + $0.13 markup is higher than Helcim's in every band. Its all-in 1.63% + $0.308 is worse than Helcim's entry 1.43% + $0.258 on both components. Online it reverses. The two cross at exactly a $120.00 ticket, and below that Adyen's indicative markup is genuinely lower. Adyen still carries no verdict here. It labels those rates indicative and requires a minimum monthly invoice it doesn't publish.
Stax: The Bands Are Annual
Stax charges a monthly subscription. It passes interchange through with no percentage markup, just 8c per card-present transaction or 15c online. The subscription is priced by annual volume:
| Subscription | Covers processing volume of |
|---|---|
| $99/month | Up to $150,000 per year (about $12,500/month) |
| $139/month | $150,000 to $250,000 per year (about $12,500-$20,800/month) |
| $199+/month | Above $250,000 per year |
Stax's page states that "subscription prices are determined by processing volume and do not include cents per transaction." Source: staxpayments.com/pricing, verified 2026-08-02.
Read as monthly, those bands make Stax look about twelve times more expensive than it is.
There's a volume at which Stax beats flat rate. There's a much higher one at which Stax beats Helcim. Publish the first and describe it as the second, and you point merchants at Stax at roughly a fifth of the volume where Stax is actually the cheapest thing available.
- Stax overtakes Square Free at about $7,300/month card-present on a $50 ticket, and about $5,600-$5,800/month online. Those numbers are correct. They mean Stax beats the flat rates early.
- Stax overtakes Helcim card-present at roughly $58,000-$70,000/month, depending on ticket. Online it's roughly $22,100-$36,200/month at its $199 floor. Those are the numbers that matter if you want the cheapest option, not merely a cheaper one than Square. Stax gets there earlier in one place: a $25 online ticket. There its published $99 and $139 tiers win from about $11,000-$12,500 and $15,400-$20,833 a month.
Stax against Helcim, card-present. Both charge 8c per transaction in the entry band. So at first the only difference is Helcim's 0.40% markup against Stax's subscription:
0.40% x V = $199 -> V = $49,750/month
But Helcim's band improves at exactly $50,000 a month, to 0.35% + 7c. Now Helcim's cent charge is a penny lower than Stax's. That step reclaims the lead almost immediately. So the durable crossover is higher, and it depends on ticket size:
| Average card-present ticket | Stax overtakes Helcim at about |
|---|---|
| $15 | $70,000/month |
| $50 | $60,000/month |
| $100 | $58,500/month |
| $150 | $58,000/month |
Note the direction. Card-present, the crossover falls as tickets get bigger. Helcim's 7c advantage per transaction is worth less when there are fewer transactions.
Online, Stax saves Helcim's 0.50% markup plus 10c per transaction, and the direction reverses:
| Average online ticket | Stax overtakes Helcim at about this monthly volume, on the $199 floor |
|---|---|
| $25 | $22,100/month |
| $75 | $31,400/month |
| $200 | $36,200/month |
Here the crossover rises with ticket size. Stax's cheaper cent charge is doing the work, and bigger tickets mean fewer transactions to apply it to. A large-ticket ecommerce merchant needs far more volume before Stax makes sense than a small-ticket one does.
The $199 floor isn't the whole story. At a $25 ticket it's the wrong number to plan on. Stax's cheaper tiers produce earlier crossovers. Whether you reach one depends on whether the crossover volume falls inside the tier that prices it. Solve at each subscription:
| Online ticket | $99 tier, ends at $12,500/mo | $139 tier, $12,500-$20,833/mo | $199 floor, above $20,833/mo |
|---|---|---|---|
| $25 | $11,000/month, inside the tier, so it's real | $15,400/month, inside the tier, so it's real | $22,100/month |
| $75 | $15,600, past the tier ceiling, never reached | $21,900, past the tier ceiling, never reached | $31,400/month |
| $200 | $18,000, past the tier ceiling, never reached | $25,300, past the tier ceiling, never reached | $36,200/month |
So a $25-ticket ecommerce merchant gets a sawtooth, not a single threshold. Stax is cheaper from about $11,000 to $12,500 a month. At $12,500 the annual volume crosses $150,000. The subscription steps to $139 and Helcim retakes the lead until about $15,400. Stax is cheaper again from $15,400 to $20,833. There the subscription steps to "$199+" and Helcim leads again until about $22,100. Above that, Stax stays ahead at its floor. Crossing a Stax tier boundary can push your bill up while your volume goes up. Near a boundary, model both. Don't read a threshold off a table. At $75 and $200 tickets there's no sawtooth, because neither cheaper tier lasts long enough to reach its own crossover.
Every "$199 floor" figure above uses exactly $199. Above $250,000 a year Stax publishes "$199+" with no ceiling. So those are the earliest volumes at which Stax could overtake Helcim, not the volumes at which it will. The $99 and $139 figures are different in kind. Those subscriptions are published numbers with a stated ceiling. So the $11,000 and $15,400 crossovers at a $25 ticket are rankable. Ask Stax what the "+" means at your volume, in writing, before you rely on anything above $250,000 a year.
Dispute Economics: Where Processors Really Differ
Card rates across the flat-rate providers land within half a point of each other. Dispute fees don't. If you run a business that gets disputes, this table matters more than the rate table.
| Provider | What one dispute costs | Refunded if you win? | Source, verified 2026-08-02 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Helcim | $0 if resolved in your favour, $15 if lost | Yes, by design. The only win-is-free policy verified here | helcim.com/pricing |
| Square | $0. "There are no fees for dispute management services for chargebacks" | Nothing to refund. Square's Payment Terms separately reserve the right to recover "the amount of any Chargeback and any associated Fees, fines, or penalties listed in the Fee Schedule", which covers network fines rather than a dispute fee | squareup.com/help |
| Authorize.net | $0.00 on card chargebacks. $25.00 on eCheck.Net | Nothing to refund on cards. Gateway fee only, so the merchant account behind it bills its own | authorize.net/pricing |
| Shopify Payments | $15.00 in the US | Yes. "If you win the chargeback, then the fee is returned to you." Shopify attributes the fee to your bank, not to Shopify | help.shopify.com |
| Toast | $15.00 per chargeback notification | No. "Charged regardless of whether you dispute the chargeback, and regardless of whether you win or lose" | support.toasttab.com |
| Stripe | $15 to receive the dispute, plus $15 to counter it | The $15 received fee is never returned. The countered fee comes back only on an outright win. On a partial win neither is returned, so fighting and partly winning costs you $30 | support.stripe.com |
| Braintree | $15.00 | Not stated to be refunded | paypal.com/us/enterprise/paypal-braintree-fees |
| PayPal, standard | $15.00 dispute fee, on PayPal-account and Guest Checkout transactions | Yes. Not charged for disputes "Decided in your favor by PayPal or your issuer" | paypal.com/us/business/paypal-business-fees |
| PayPal, high volume | $30.00, once your dispute ratio hits 1.5% with more than 100 sales in the prior three full calendar months | No. The win exemption isn't in this tier's list | PayPal User Agreement |
| PayPal, chargeback fee | $20.00, on card transactions that went through neither a PayPal account nor Guest Checkout | No. Charged "regardless of whether the buyer is successful" | paypal.com/us/business/paypal-business-fees |
| Moneris | CA$25.00, plus a CA$80.00 "Authorization Chargeback Handling" fee | Not stated | moneris.com/en/pricing |
| Stax | Optional chargeback protection add-on at $25 per chargeback | Not applicable | staxpayments.com/pricing |
| Lightspeed | $15. Its own wording is "a single $15 fee and we will fight tooth and nail to dispute the claim on your behalf", which implies no separate representment charge | Not stated. Confirm in writing | lightspeedhq.com/payments |
| Clover | Not published at any tier. Not on the pricing page, the six vertical pages, the FAQ, or in third-party coverage | Unknown | clover.com/pricing |
| Worldpay, Global Payments, Adyen, Checkout.com | Not published. Global Payments says only that "your processor charges you a fee for each chargeback you receive" | Unknown. Ask before you sign | Global Payments help |
| Nuvei | Per contract. "The current published fees for each chargeback as listed on Schedule A of the Merchant Application" | Unknown | Nuvei merchant agreement |
The whole published US span is $0 to $30. Nothing on this table reaches $35, let alone the $100 that circulates everywhere. That $100 traces to one undated, unsourced sentence in Adyen's own marketing article. Adyen's actual pricing page publishes no dispute fee at all.
Three things worth acting on:
Refund-on-win is where processors really differ. Square charges nothing at all. Helcim charges $0 on a win. Shopify returns the fee. PayPal's standard tier doesn't charge it on a case decided in your favour. Stripe and Toast charge it either way. On a book where you win most disputes, that's a bigger spread than the card rate.
PayPal's two fees don't stack. The $15 covers PayPal-account and Guest Checkout transactions. The $20 covers card transactions that went through neither. Adding them to $35 is the common error. No PayPal merchant pays $35 on one dispute.
PayPal's 1.5% line is the expensive part. Above it the fee doubles to $30 and the win exemption disappears. A dispute you win goes from costing $0 to costing $30. That's in the User Agreement. It's the single largest dispute-cost cliff in this table.
Instant Payout Fees
Paying to get your money early is one of the most expensive things an SMB does routinely. And the rates moved.
| Provider | Instant payout fee | Notes | Source, verified 2026-08-02 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Square | 1.95% per transfer | Square's help centre: funds move "24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for a 1.95% fee per transfer". No minimum stated | squareup.com/help |
| Stripe | 1.5% for US, AU, NZ, AE. 1% for CA, EU, UK, SG, NO, HK, MY | Minimum $0.50, maximum $9,999 per payout | docs.stripe.com/payouts/instant-payouts |
| PayPal | Instant Transfer to bank 1.50%, $0.50 minimum. Standard Payout 2% capped at $1.00 | Two different products. The cap is the thing to notice: Standard Payout never exceeds $1.00, Instant Transfer keeps scaling | paypal.com/us/business/paypal-business-fees |
| Clover | 1.75% per transfer, branded Rapid Deposit | Cheapest published instant payout here | clover.com/pricing |
| Braintree, Helcim, Stax, Shopify, Adyen, Toast, Lightspeed, Moneris, Checkout.com | Not published | Ask | See table above |
Two figures worth checking against anything else you've read. Square's instant transfer is 1.95%, not 1.5%. And Stripe's US rate is 1.5%, not 1%. The 1% figure is Stripe's Canadian rate, mislabelled as US.
At $50,000 a month of instant transfers, Square's 1.95% is $975 and Stripe's US 1.5% is $750. Standard payouts cost nothing.
The Vendors That Publish Less Than They Could
Three of these five publish more than they get credit for. Below is what each one actually publishes, and what to negotiate toward on the parts it doesn't.
Clover (Fiserv)
What it publishes: a full vertical-by-vertical rate card. 2.3% + 10c card-present for restaurants and quick service, 2.6% + 10c on entry retail and services plans, 3.5% + 10c keyed and online across every vertical. Software $0 to $129.85. Hardware both outright and on a 36-month subscription. Rapid Deposit at 1.75%.
Where the rates are: clover.com/pricing, and on each of the six vertical pricing pages.
What's structurally true: the reseller sets your actual rate. Clover says so on its own pricing page. "Contract terms and any termination fees can vary based on your service provider, whether Clover Direct or among our trusted partners including Citi, PNC, Wells Fargo."
Ask for, in writing: who the merchant of record is, Clover Direct or a bank or ISO. Your effective rate on a real month of statements. Confirmation of 3.5% + 10c keyed, since anything above it is markup. The chargeback fee in dollars, the one figure Clover publishes nowhere. The contract term, the auto-renewal, and the 30 days' notice Clover requires to stop it. Whether hardware is subscribed or bought, and whether you own it at term end.
What to push toward: Clover's own published direct rates, and an outright hardware purchase. On Clover's published figures the 36-month subscription premium runs $227 to $3,622 depending on bundle. Its FAQ confirms you don't own the device at the end.
Toast
What it publishes: two processing percentages, on its shop pages rather than its pricing page. 2.49% on Traditional and 3.09% on Pay-as-you-Go. Plans at $0 Starter Kit, $69 Point of Sale restaurant, $90 retail. Its FY2025 10-K adds a 12-to-36 month contract range. It also gives enough data to compute a 2.58% blended gross take on $195.1bn of volume.
Why it looks unpublished: pos.toasttab.com/pricing says "Simple, flat rate" and then gives no number. The percentages sit on the shop pages instead.
The trap: Toast publishes only the percentage. The "+ $0.15" that every comparison attaches is reported, not published, by NerdWallet and two content sites. Never quote the two as one vendor rate.
Ask for, in writing: the fixed cents component. The card-not-present rate, which Toast publishes nowhere. Whether the rate can rise during the term, with a written cap. The term, pushing for 12 months since Toast's own filing says 12 is the bottom of its range. The chargeback fee. Hardware price and financing. And whether payments are contractually locked to Toast.
What to push toward: the plan choice is arithmetic, not judgement. The 0.60 point gap breaks even at about $11,500/month ignoring hardware or $25,300/month including it. Below that, Pay-as-you-Go, and you own the hardware from day one. Above it, Traditional. And sanity-check any quote against Toast's own 2.58% blended take. Above 3.09% you're above the sticker price of its most expensive published plan.
Lightspeed
What it publishes: 2.6% + 10c card-present for retail (X-Series), a $15 chargeback fee, and plan prices for both product lines. Its Q1 FY2027 filing implies a blended take of about 1.90% of processed volume.
Why the "1.5%" figure is wrong: the string "1.5" appears nowhere on Lightspeed's pricing page. It's an artefact that propagated through comparison content.
What genuinely isn't published: the online, keyed and card-not-present rates, on either product line, and the processing rate for the restaurant product at all. The restaurant absence is real. It was verified by pattern-searching the rendered page, not assumed.
Ask for: the online rate, first and hardest. A card-present rate below 2.6% + 10c. Confirmation that $15 is the whole dispute cost with no representment fee. The contract term, billing frequency and ETF. Hardware cost, which matters because Lightspeed says existing terminals can't be reused, "as these have not been injected with the certified firmware".
What to push toward: below list. Lightspeed's own blended 1.90% take sits well under its 2.6% + 10c US list price. Its payments page lists "Negotiate a competitive rate" as a bullet. The gap is partly European mix and partly larger merchants negotiating. The second one tells you it's available.
Adyen
Adyen publishes no SMB rate card and no annual volume floor. It does publish a model. Interchange++ with a $0.13 processing fee per transaction and an indicative card markup of 0.60%. Plus this line: "We do not have monthly fees, set-up fees, integration fees or closure fees. We do have a minimum invoice depending on industry or business model." No amount is attached to that minimum. Adyen also caveats its own table: "The fees outlined above are indicative; please get in touch to discuss pricing options."
Ignore any Adyen rate table or "$10M/year minimum" you find elsewhere. A minimum invoice isn't a volume floor, and Adyen attaches no number to it publicly.
The number Adyen does publish, and it reframes the negotiation: its own annual report puts the FY2025 take rate at 17.0 basis points, up from 15.5 bps in 2024, on EUR 2,364.2M of net revenue over EUR 1,394.3bn of processed volume. H1 2025 was 16.8 bps. Against an indicative 60 bps card markup, Adyen earns about 28% of its own list price on average.
That's company-wide net revenue over volume, including POS hardware, issuing and FX. So it isn't a rate you can demand. It does tell you 0.60% is an opening position.
REPORTED: Merchant Maverick, a review site that discloses referral commissions from Adyen, last updated 2024-12-10, puts the minimum invoice at $120/month or 1,000 transactions/month. Single-source and roughly 18 months stale. The same source's Amex figure is demonstrably wrong against Adyen's live page. Verify it.
What to push toward: a markup well under 0.60% at real volume. A minimum invoice you clear in an ordinary month. A volume step-down schedule written into the contract. A written rate review at 12 months. Adyen's published $0 early termination fee is unusual for this tier and worth protecting.
Checkout.com
Offers both a flat-rate and an Interchange++ model, priced "based on your business profile and risk category, nothing else". No numbers published anywhere.
This absence is real, and it's worth distinguishing from the three on this page that aren't. Checkout.com's pricing page carries no percentage or currency value anywhere in it, hidden or otherwise. Its full 1,552-URL sitemap contains only /pricing and two cost-optimization pages, with no fee schedule, rate card or regional pricing page. Third-party coverage is empty too. There is genuinely nothing to find.
Ask for: which risk category you're in, what its boundaries are, and what moves you across one. Both quotes, flat-rate and Interchange++, modelled against your last 12 months. A sample settlement file showing interchange, scheme fees and markup as three separate lines before you sign.
What to push toward: Interchange++ with an itemised settlement file, a defined risk category with a written path to reprice, and no minimum commitment in year one. Attack the category before the rate. If your chargeback rate, refund rate and MCC sit near a boundary, that's worth more than basis points.
Global Payments and Nuvei
Neither publishes a rate anywhere on its own site, sitemap included.
Global Payments REPORTED fees, all from Merchant Maverick (review site, discloses referral commissions from Global Payments, updated 2024-11-19): a $299/year account maintenance fee, a $125/month PCI non-compliance fee, a three-year initial term with automatic one-year renewals, and an ETF of $100 to $500. Single-source, affiliate-compensated and roughly 20 months stale.
The PCI fee is the one to interrogate. It's avoidable. It's charged when you fail to complete your self-assessment questionnaire, not when you process. A merchant paying it loses $1,500 a year for a form. Ask what triggers it, the deadline, and the submission method, in writing. Then calendar it with a 30-day warning.
Nuvei publishes nothing and no longer files. It delisted in November 2024. The only anchor left is DERIVED from its final Q2 2024 filing. That's $345.5M of revenue on $61.7bn of volume, or 56.0 basis points blended. It isn't comparable to Adyen's 17.0 bps. Adyen reports "net revenue" under a specific definition and calls the ratio a take rate. Nuvei reports "revenue", and the word "interchange" appears nowhere in its release. Nuvei's mix also skews to high-risk, high-margin verticals. A low-risk retail merchant should expect nothing like 56 bps.
Ask Nuvei for the reserve terms above everything else. Rolling, fixed or capped, at what percentage, held how long, and what releases it. A 5-10% rolling reserve held 180 days is a working capital event, not a fee. It's absent from every public source.
Built-In Fraud Tools
| Provider | What's included | What costs extra |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe | Radar Lite is included with Stripe Payments at no extra charge | Radar Standard, Plus and Pro are monthly subscriptions with an included screen allowance, or pay-as-you-go from $0.05 per screened transaction. US list: businesses $10 / $14 / $20 a month; platforms and marketplaces $20 / $44 / $70 |
| Square | Automatic ML fraud detection, CVV/AVS checks, velocity checks, card-testing protection | No custom rules engine offered |
| Shopify Payments | Fraud Analysis indicators per order; Shopify Protect chargeback coverage on eligible Shop Pay orders | Not published |
| Helcim | Basic AVS/CVV checks | No custom rules engine offered |
| Braintree | Basic CVV/AVS and duplicate detection | Advanced fraud scoring is an add-on; price not published |
| PayPal | Seller Protection on eligible transactions; Fraud Management Filters (AVS, CVV, country and amount blocks) | Internal ML scoring isn't merchant-configurable |
Source for Radar: stripe.com/radar and stripe.com/radar/pricing, verified 2026-08-02.
The name "Radar for Fraud Teams" appears nowhere on Stripe's Radar page, pricing page or docs as of 2 August 2026. The current tiers are Lite, Standard, Plus and Pro. Any table quoting "$0.02/txn" for Radar for Fraud Teams is pricing something you can't buy.
Understanding Payment Channels
Accepting payments usually means supporting three channels plus the software that runs them:
- CP (card-present): tap, insert or swipe in person. Lowest fraud, usually the lowest cost.
- CNP (card-not-present): online checkout, invoices, payment links.
- Keyed / virtual terminal: you type the card number. Highest risk, usually the highest cost.
- POS: your in-person register software and hardware, often bundled with processing.
The keyed penalty is real and published. Square charges 2.6% + 15c in person and 3.5% + 15c keyed, a 0.9 point difference on identical money. Stripe adds 0.5% for manual entry. Restrict keyed entry to genuine need.
- Stripe - Online, SaaS, developers
- Square - Retail, card-present, non-technical
- Shopify Payments - Shopify stores
- Helcim - Interchange-plus transparency
- Stax - Subscription pricing, high-volume savings
- Clover - POS hardware, restaurants and retail
- Toast - Restaurant-specific POS and processing
- Lightspeed - Complex retail, advanced inventory
- Braintree - Cards plus PayPal and Venmo
- PayPal - Brand recognition, trust
- Moneris - Canada's largest processor
- Checkout.com - Mid-market global, developer-friendly
- Adyen - Enterprise, global
Or see Processors Overview for the decision framework.
Small Tickets: The Fixed Fee Is the Whole Story
On a $100 sale, a 30c fixed fee is 0.3%. On a $20 sale it's 1.5%. Here's what the published online rates actually cost on a $20 order, sorted cheapest first:
| Provider and product | Published online rate | Cost on a $20 order | Effective rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stax (interchange + 15c) | IC + 15c, plus subscription | $0.62 plus subscription | 3.11% plus subscription |
| Helcim (entry band) | IC + 0.50% + 25c | $0.82 | 4.11% |
| Braintree | 2.89% + $0.29 | $0.87 | 4.34% |
| Square Plus / Premium | 2.9% + 30c | $0.88 | 4.40% |
| Stripe (domestic) | 2.9% + 30c | $0.88 | 4.40% |
| Square Free | 3.3% + 30c | $0.96 | 4.80% |
| PayPal standard card payments | 2.99% + $0.49 | $1.09 | 5.44% |
| PayPal Checkout | 3.49% + $0.49 | $1.19 | 5.94% |
The interchange-plus rows use this site's online pass-through assumption of 1.50% + $0.172. Stax's $0.62 needs the monthly subscription amortised on top. Against Helcim it saves 20 cents an order. At the $99 tier that's 495 orders a month, or $9,900 of volume, before the subscription is earned back.
Two things here that the usual version of this table misses. Helcim wins a $20 order despite the largest fixed component of any interchange-plus option here. That's 42.2 cents combined against Stax's 32.2 cents. Its percentage is so much lower that the fixed fee never catches up. Only PayPal's two products carry a larger fixed fee, at 49 cents. PayPal Checkout's 49c is the outlier at the other end. At a $20 ticket the fixed fee alone is 2.45%, before the percentage rate applies. Small average order plus a lot of PayPal Checkout volume is where your margin goes.
Card-present is where the fixed fee genuinely shrinks. It's also where the Canada-versus-US correction bites. Shopify Payments charges no per-transaction cents in person in Canada, and 10 cents in the US. The zero gets quoted as though it held in every market. It doesn't.
The processor's own card-present fixed fee, in USD: Stripe Terminal 5c, PayPal Zettle 9c, Helcim 8c, Stax 8c, Clover 10c, Shopify 10c, Lightspeed 10c, Square 15c. That isn't the whole fixed cost on an interchange-plus deal. Interchange itself carries a fixed component of about 15.8 cents card-present. An interchange-plus merchant sees it on the statement. A flat-rate merchant pays it invisibly inside the headline rate. Comparing 8c against 15c as though that were the whole picture is one of the commonest ways these tables mislead.
The "Geography Gap" (US vs. EU)
When a US company sees a 1.2% rate quoted for Europe, that applies to local-to-local transactions only.
| Factor | United States (domestic) | Europe (EEA domestic) | The US SMB reality |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interchange cap | None. Consumer credit runs 1.51-2.30% + $0.10 card-present, 1.89-2.60% + $0.10 online | Capped at 0.3% credit / 0.2% debit | US rates fund the cashback culture |
| Card mix | Heavy rewards and premium | Mostly basic debit and credit | Premium US cards cost more to process |
| Cross-border | Adder applies, see below | Adder applies, see below | A US company selling into the EU pays more |
Cross-Border Adders, As Published
| Provider | Cross-border adder | Currency conversion | Source, verified 2026-08-02 |
|---|---|---|---|
| PayPal | +1.50% international | Not separately published | paypal.com/us/business/paypal-business-fees |
| Braintree | +1% for cards issued outside the US | +1% for non-USD currency | paypal.com/us/enterprise/paypal-braintree-fees |
| Stripe | +0.8% for international cards | +2% currency conversion | stripe.com/pricing, CAD-served |
| Square, Shopify Payments, Helcim, Stax | Not published | Not published | Ask |
Worked example on fully verified USD numbers. $10,000 a month, $20 average ticket, so 500 transactions, all online through Braintree:
| Scenario | Rate applied | Percentage cost | Fixed cost | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US cards, USD | 2.89% + $0.29 | $289 | $145 | $434 |
| Cards issued outside the US, USD | 3.89% + $0.29 | $389 | $145 | $534 |
| Cards issued outside the US, non-USD | 4.89% + $0.29 | $489 | $145 | $634 |
Selling internationally in local currency costs this merchant an extra $200 a month, or 2% of volume, on published rates alone. That's before FX spread on the settlement itself. If most of your revenue is cross-border, that's the number that justifies local acquiring over the domestic card rate.
Choosing by SMB Profile
"I just need to take payments fast"
Square for in-person, Stripe for online. Both are $0 a month with no contract and both get you taking cards today.
Be clear about what that speed costs, because it isn't nothing. At $5,000 a month card-present and a $50 ticket, Square is $145.00 and Helcim is $97.30. That's $47.70 a month, or $572 a year, on $60,000 of annual volume. It's a defensible trade for getting paid this week instead of next. Revisit it once you have three months of real statements.
"I care about lowering cost as I scale"
Helcim first. The markup schedule is published in full, and there's no monthly fee to earn back. That last part is why there's no "scale" threshold to wait for. Helcim beats Square card-present from a $9.23 ticket upward, at $5,000 a month exactly as much as at $500,000 a month. Helcim publishes five real bands up to $5M a month and only goes custom above that. So "call us" starts much later than most merchants assume.
Two exceptions worth knowing before you commit. If your card-present ticket is small, PayPal Zettle beats Helcim below about a $19.53 ticket in the entry band, and below about $13.96 in the $500K-1M band. And if your card mix runs to premium rewards or commercial credit, Square's flat rate caps an exposure. Helcim passes it straight through to you.
Stax once you're past roughly $58,000-$70,000/month card-present, where the crossover falls as your ticket rises. Or $22,100-$36,200/month online, where it rises as your ticket rises. That's where the 0% markup outruns the subscription. Both ranges assume Stax's published $199 floor. Above $250,000 a year that's a floor, not a quote. The exception is a $25 online ticket. There Stax's published $99 and $139 tiers beat Helcim from about $11,000 to $12,500 a month, and again from about $15,400 to $20,833. Those two windows are rankable, because both subscriptions are published numbers with a stated ceiling.
"I'm on Shopify"
Use Shopify Payments. Not because the rate is unbeatable. Because Shopify charges a third-party gateway fee on every order if you process elsewhere. That's 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, 0.2% on Plus. That fee is the lock-in, not the card rate. Model it before you consider an outside processor.
"I need restaurant or heavy retail POS"
All three publish a card-present rate. Clover Direct is 2.3% + 10c for restaurants and 2.6% + 10c for entry retail. Toast is 2.49% Traditional or 3.09% Pay-as-you-Go. Lightspeed is 2.6% + 10c retail.
Get quotes from all three anyway. Put them side by side on effective rate, including hardware and software. Benchmark each quote against that vendor's own published rate. Any gap is markup. Then use the question list above for the parts none of them publishes. Chargeback fees at Clover and Toast, the online rate at Lightspeed, hardware pricing at Toast.
Ask specifically about hardware subscriptions and payments lock-in. That's where these deals get expensive. Clover's own published figures show a 36-month hardware subscription premium of $227 to $3,622, with no ownership at the end. A Toast contract typically prevents switching processors without replacing the POS.
"I want cards plus PayPal and Venmo in one integration"
Braintree. Its 2.89% + $0.29 sits 1.25 cents from Stripe's Canadian figure on a $25 order. Stripe's US rate isn't verified, so there's no cost argument either way. PayPal and Venmo are native rather than bolted on. That's a real difference. Venmo is 3.49% + $0.49. ACH is 0.75% capped at $5, or 1.5% + $0.10 same-day, with a $5 fee on returned or disputed ACH.
"I'm a Canadian business"
Moneris publishes CAD rates openly. Most Canadian acquirers don't. Budget for the CA$80 authorization chargeback handling fee. It's unusual and easy to miss. Square and Stripe both operate in Canada and suit most Canadian SMBs.
"I need global acquiring with good APIs"
Checkout.com and Adyen are both quote-only. Neither publishes an SMB rate, and neither publishes a volume floor. Ask both for the pricing model, scheme fee treatment, and any minimum monthly invoice before you spend engineering time.
Other Processors Worth Getting a Quote From
None of these publishes a rate we could verify against its own pricing page on 2026-08-02, so this is a list of names only. A stale rate in a comparison table is worse than no rate. It looks checkable and isn't. Use these as a shortlist to request quotes from, then price them yourself with the 3-bid method.
North America: Chase Payment Solutions, QuickBooks Payments, Wave, Dharma Merchant Services, National Processing, PaymentCloud, ProPay, Payline Data, Authorize.net (gateway only), BluePay, Worldpay (FIS), Fiserv, Global Payments, Nuvei, Elavon, Shift4, CardConnect, Merchant One, Flagship Merchant Services, Fortis, Paya, Payment Depot, Handpoint, Bank of America Merchant Services, TSYS, SpotOn, NCR Voyix, Gravity Payments.
Europe and UK: Mollie, SumUp, Tyl by NatWest, Viva.com, Worldpay, Zettle, Payrexx, Nexi, Monei, Epos Now.
Africa: Paystack, Flutterwave, Yoco, DPO Group, Peach Payments, Interswitch, Remita, M-Pesa, Ozow, Fawry.
Asia-Pacific: Eway, Airwallex, Razorpay, Tyro, Omise, Xendit, 2C2P, GMO Payment Gateway, HitPay, Till Payments.
Latin America: dLocal, Mercado Pago, PagSeguro, Conekta, Kushki, EBANX, Stone, Clip, Bold, Niubiz. Expect installments (cuotas) and cash vouchers to be first-class payment methods rather than add-ons.
Ask each one for the same five numbers. Effective rate on your actual mix. Per-transaction fixed fee. Monthly and minimum fees. Chargeback fee. Contract term with the early termination clause.
Next Steps
Ready to choose a processor?
- Buying Payments - Decision framework for processor selection
- Processor Management - Managing processor relationships
- Reading Statements - Finding your real blended interchange
Want to understand costs better?
- Interchange Optimization - Reduce interchange costs
- Processor Fees Guide - Hidden fee breakdown
- Total Cost Model - What payments really cost all-in
Related Pages
- Buying Payments - How to evaluate and negotiate
- Payment Methods - Cards, ACH, wallets, BNPL
- Going Global - International processing considerations
- Interchange Reference - Interchange rate tables
- Cost Model Assumptions - The interchange blend every verdict on this page runs on