Adyen
- Adyen doesn't publish SMB rates. There's no rate card. What it publishes is a model: Interchange++ plus $0.13 a transaction, with an indicative card markup of 0.60%
- No volume floor either. There's no $10 million a year minimum on Adyen's pricing page. That number was invented. It's gone from this page
- Adyen says it charges no monthly, set-up, integration or closure fee. But it does have "a minimum invoice depending on industry or business model," with no amount attached. Get that number in writing before you integrate
- The markup comparison splits by channel. Card-present, Adyen's indicative 0.60% + $0.13 is higher than every published Helcim band. Higher percentage, higher cents. It costs more at every ticket size. Online it depends on your ticket. Adyen's 13 cents undercuts Helcim's 25. So Adyen comes in lower than Helcim's entry online band below a $120 ticket, higher above it
- Adyen's case is local acquiring across many markets. That saving lands in the interchange line, not the markup line
- Adyen publishes its own take rate. It's the most useful number available. 17.0 basis points for FY2025, up from 15.5 bps in 2024, in its own annual report. Set that against an indicative 60 bps card markup. Adyen earns about 28% of its own list price on average. So 0.60% is an opening position, not a rate
- The minimum invoice is REPORTED at $120 a month or 1,000 transactions a month. One affiliate-compensated source says so, and it gets Adyen's Amex rate demonstrably wrong. Treat it as a hypothesis, not a figure
- Asked about Adyen: expect Interchange++ plus $0.13. Ask for the minimum monthly invoice. Don't assume the rate beats a transparent domestic processor
If you're weighing Adyen, you've already found there's no price to look up. Below is what Adyen does publish. Plus what its own annual report says about the rate its average customer pays. Adyen's case is one platform with local acquiring in many countries. It isn't a cheaper domestic rate.
Everything on this page about Adyen's pricing was read from adyen.com/pricing on 2 August 2026.
Adyen caveats its own table: "The fees outlined above are indicative; please get in touch to discuss pricing options." Treat every number here as a starting point for a conversation, not a rate card.
When to Use Adyen
Adyen is worth a conversation if:
- You sell in many countries and want local acquiring rather than cross-border processing
- You want one platform across online, in-store, and mobile with unified reporting
- You have a development team and months of runway for an integration
- Your auth rates are being hurt by cross-border routing
Skip Adyen if:
- You want a published price you can check before talking to anyone
- You're single-market. A domestic interchange-plus processor will be cheaper and simpler
- You don't have developers
- You need to be live in weeks
What Adyen Actually Publishes
The Pricing Model
Total = Interchange + Scheme Fees + Adyen's Processing Fee + Adyen's Payment Method Markup
| Component | What Adyen publishes |
|---|---|
| Processing fee | $0.13 per transaction |
| Indicative card markup | 0.60% |
| Interchange | Passed through. Set by the networks |
| Scheme fees | Passed through. Set by the networks |
Source: adyen.com/pricing, verified 2 August 2026.
Published Payment Method Prices VENDOR
Every transaction carries the $0.13 processing fee. What sits on top of it varies enormously by method:
| Method | Published price |
|---|---|
| Visa, Mastercard, Maestro | $0.13 + Interchange++ + 0.60% |
| Amex Global | $0.13 + 3.95% |
| Alipay | $0.13 + 3% |
| Klarna, US and Canada | $0.13 + 4.29% + $0.30 |
| SEPA Direct Debit | $0.13 + EUR 0.27 |
| PayPal | $0.13 + your direct PayPal contract + a management service fee |
Source: adyen.com/pricing, verified 2 August 2026.
Look at the shape of that list before the numbers. Alipay is percentage-heavy. SEPA Direct Debit is effectively flat. Klarna carries a high percentage and a fixed fee. Your effective rate depends entirely on your method mix. Get the full method-by-method schedule from sales before you model anything.
Fees and Minimums
| Item | Status | Tier |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly fee | None | VENDOR |
| Set-up fee | None | VENDOR |
| Integration fee | None | VENDOR |
| Closure fee | None. A published $0 early termination fee is genuinely unusual in this tier of the market and is worth protecting in the contract | VENDOR |
| Minimum invoice | Exists. Adyen: "We do have a minimum invoice depending on industry or business model." Adyen attaches no amount to it | VENDOR |
| Minimum invoice, amount | $120 a month or 1,000 transactions a month | REPORTED |
| Annual volume floor | No minimum volume requirement appears anywhere on Adyen's pricing page | VENDOR |
| Take rate, company-wide | 17.0 bps FY2025, 15.5 bps 2024, 16.8 bps H1 2025 | VENDOR |
| Dispute or chargeback fee | Not published on the pricing page, not in the annual report, and no credible third party publishes one | NOT PUBLISHED |
| Instant payout | Not published | NOT PUBLISHED |
| FX spread | Not published | NOT PUBLISHED |
The only figure available comes from Merchant Maverick, last updated 2024-12-10. That site discloses it earns referral commissions from Adyen. It reports "$120/month or 1,000 transactions/month".
Two reasons to treat that as a hypothesis. It's roughly 20 months stale. And the same source's Amex rate, $0.13 + 3.3% + $0.10, is demonstrably wrong. Adyen's live page says $0.13 + 3.95%. A source that gets one checkable number wrong doesn't earn trust on an uncheckable one.
It's here anyway, tagged. For a small merchant deciding whether to start a sales conversation, $120 a month and $12,000 a month are very different answers. Verify it in writing before you act on it.
Adyen's Own Take Rate VENDOR
This number reframes the whole negotiation. It's in Adyen's own reporting, not anyone's estimate.
| Period | Net revenue | Processed volume | Take rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | EUR 2,364.2M (+18%) | EUR 1,394.3bn (+8%) | 17.0 bps |
| FY2024 | - | - | 15.5 bps |
| H1 2025 | EUR 1,093.5M | EUR 649.0bn | 16.8 bps |
| H2 2024 | - | - | 16.2 bps |
| H1 2024 | - | - | 14.7 bps |
FY2025 EBITDA was EUR 1,245.7M on a 53% margin. POS volume was EUR 310.9bn, 22% of the total.
Arithmetic check on the published inputs: EUR 1,093.5M / EUR 649.0bn = 16.85 bps, and EUR 2,364.2M / EUR 1,394.3bn = 16.96 bps. Both reconcile.
It's company-wide net revenue over processed volume. It includes POS hardware, issuing, platform fees and FX. That isn't one merchant's card markup. You can't walk into a negotiation demanding 17 basis points.
What it does tell you is the direction and scale of the gap. Adyen's indicative card markup is 60 basis points. Its blended realized take across its whole book is 17. Whatever the mix effects, a merchant paying the full 0.60% pays multiples of Adyen's average customer. Say that in a pricing conversation. It's from Adyen's own annual report, not an inference.
A tiered rate table: 1.8-2.2% at $10M-$50M a year, 1.2-1.8% at $50M-$250M, and so on. A "$10M/year minimum." A setup fee of $0 to $50,000. A monthly platform fee of $0 to $10,000. A roughly EUR 25 dispute fee. Per-authorization fees of $0.01 to $0.05.
None of it appears on Adyen's pricing page.
Two specific corrections matter most:
- There's no $10 million a year minimum. Adyen publishes no volume floor at all. Nothing on its site says it'll reject you below $10M a year.
- A minimum invoice isn't a volume floor. Adyen does say it has a minimum invoice depending on industry and business model. It attaches no number to it publicly. Those are different things. Conflating them produces a made-up threshold.
The Comparison Nobody Runs: Adyen's Indicative Markup vs Published Alternatives
Adyen's indicative card markup is 0.60% + $0.13. Compare that number. Interchange and scheme fees pass through the same for everyone.
You can't rank a percentage against a fixed fee without a ticket size. Adyen's shape is unusual: a higher percentage than Helcim in every band, and a lower fixed fee than Helcim charges online. So the answer flips at a ticket size. And it flips in a different place in each band.
| Processor | Published markup over interchange | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Adyen | 0.60% + $0.13 (indicative, negotiable) | adyen.com/pricing |
| Helcim, $0-50K/month online | 0.50% + $0.25 | helcim.com/pricing |
| Helcim, $100K-$500K/month online | 0.35% + $0.20 | Same |
| Helcim, $1M-$5M/month online | 0.15% + $0.15 | Same |
| Helcim, $0-50K/month card-present | 0.40% + $0.08 | Same |
| Helcim, $1M-$5M/month card-present | 0.15% + $0.06 | Same |
| Stax | 0% + $0.15 online, 0% + $0.08 card-present, plus a monthly subscription | staxpayments.com/pricing |
All verified 2 August 2026.
Card-present: Adyen's indicative markup is higher, at every ticket
Card-present, Helcim charges 8 cents at the bottom band and 6 cents at the top. Both sit under Adyen's 13 cents. Its percentage is under Adyen's 0.60% in every band too. Adyen loses on both components, so no ticket size rescues it. Markup cost per transaction:
| Ticket | Adyen indicative | Helcim entry band | Helcim $1M-$5M band |
|---|---|---|---|
| $15 | $0.22 | $0.14 | $0.08 |
| $50 | $0.43 | $0.28 | $0.14 |
| $150 | $1.03 | $0.68 | $0.29 |
Online: it depends on your average ticket
Online, Helcim's fixed fee runs 25 cents down to 15 cents. All of that sits above Adyen's 13 cents. So Adyen's indicative markup wins at small tickets and loses at large ones. The crossover falls in a different place in each band.
| Ticket | Adyen indicative | Helcim entry band | Helcim $100K-$500K | Helcim $1M-$5M |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $25 | $0.28 | $0.38 | $0.29 | $0.19 |
| $75 | $0.58 | $0.63 | $0.46 | $0.26 |
| $200 | $1.33 | $1.25 | $0.90 | $0.45 |
Where each crossover falls:
| Helcim online band | Adyen's indicative markup is lower below a ticket of |
|---|---|
| $0-50K/month, 0.50% + $0.25 | $120.00 |
| $50K-100K/month, 0.45% + $0.20 | $46.67 |
| $100K-500K/month, 0.35% + $0.20 | $28.00 |
| $500K-1M/month, 0.25% + $0.15 | $5.71 |
| $1M-5M/month, 0.15% + $0.15 | $4.44 |
Read the pattern. The more volume you do, the less Adyen's low fixed fee rescues its high percentage. Helcim's percentage keeps falling. Adyen's doesn't.
And Stax isn't automatically cheaper either
Stax charges no percentage. That sounds decisive and isn't. The subscription is a fixed cost you have to spread over your transactions. Take the top of Stax's published range, $20,833 a month on the $139 tier. Markup per transaction is about $0.32 at a $25 online ticket, $0.65 at $75 and $1.49 at $200. Adyen's indicative figures are $0.28, $0.58 and $1.33. So on published numbers Adyen comes in lower in all three. Card-present it's mixed. Stax is lower at $15 and $50, Adyen at $150.
Stax only clearly undercuts Adyen once the subscription spreads across far more volume. That happens above $250,000 a year. Which is exactly where Stax stops publishing what the subscription costs.
The conclusion, stated narrowly. Adyen's indicative markup is higher than Helcim's card-present at every ticket. Online it's higher above a ticket that runs from about $4.44 to $120, depending on the band. Against Stax it's lower in most cells we can check. That's a narrower claim than "highest of the group," and it's the one the arithmetic supports.
None of that makes Adyen a bad choice. It means Adyen's argument isn't price in a single market. Adyen's argument is:
- Local acquiring in many countries. It moves an international transaction from cross-border interchange to domestic. That saving lands in the interchange line, not the markup line. It can dwarf a markup gap of a fifth of a point
- One integration and one reconciliation across online, in-store, and mobile
- Routing and optimization that lifts auth rates
US-only and card-present? A transparent domestic processor wins on published numbers at every ticket size. Make Adyen prove otherwise with a quote. US-only online with a small average ticket? The markup comparison is close on the indicative figure. The minimum invoice Adyen won't publish is what decides it. Selling in fifteen countries through a US acquirer? The local-acquiring saving is worth more than any of this. Adyen's case is strong.
What Adyen Does Well
1. Local Acquiring Across Many Markets
This is the actual product. When a customer in a market pays a merchant through an acquirer in that market, interchange is domestic. Route the same transaction cross-border and it costs materially more. Adyen holds acquiring licenses in many markets and routes accordingly.
For a real multi-market business, this is where the money is. No amount of markup shopping with a domestic processor replicates it.
2. Unified Commerce
Online, in-store and mobile on one platform. One set of reporting, one reconciliation. Run separate processors per channel today and the operational saving is real. It rarely shows up in a rate comparison.
3. Enterprise Reliability
Multi-region redundancy, real-time failover, and an uptime posture built for businesses where an outage is measured in lost revenue per minute.
4. Revenue Optimization
Smart routing, network tokenization, local scheme optimization, retry logic. These lift authorization rates. An auth rate point usually beats a markup basis point.
What Adyen Does Poorly
1. You Can't Price It Without a Salesperson
Adyen publishes a model and a handful of payment-method prices. It doesn't publish card rates, dispute fees, or the minimum invoice. You can't build a business case from public information. That's a real cost when you're comparing options.
2. The Minimum Invoice Is Undisclosed
Adyen confirms a minimum invoice exists. It won't publish the number. For a smaller merchant that's the most important line in the contract. It sets your floor cost whatever your volume. Ask for it in writing, in dollars, before any integration work starts.
3. Complex Setup
Adyen isn't plug-and-play. Expect a real integration project with experienced developers, a certification process for card-present, and admin portal training. Stripe is days.
No dollar range for that integration is published anywhere. Get it scoped by whoever would build it.
4. Rigid Contracts
Multi-year commitments, volume minimums, early termination clauses, auto-renewal. All common at this tier. None of the specifics are published. Read the contract, not an article.
Pricing Comparison (Adyen vs Alternatives)
| Processor | What you can look up before a sales call | Setup | Min volume |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adyen | Model only: IC++ plus $0.13, indicative 0.60% markup | Months | Not published |
| Checkout.com | Nothing. Quote-only | Weeks | Not published |
| Stripe | Full flat-rate card. No volume schedule published | Days | Not published |
| Helcim | Full markup schedule across five volume bands | Days | None |
| Stax | Full subscription and per-transaction schedule | Days | Not published |
| Square | Full rate card | 15 minutes | None. Custom pricing invited above $250K/year |
All verified 2 August 2026 from each vendor's own pricing page.
Verdict: Adyen and Checkout.com are the two on this list you can't evaluate without talking to sales. That's a real cost of considering them. Weigh it against the local-acquiring benefit instead of ignoring it.
Who Adyen Is Best For
Perfect Fit
| Business Type | Why Adyen Wins |
|---|---|
| Global marketplaces | Split payments plus local acquiring across many seller markets |
| Multi-country e-commerce | Domestic interchange instead of cross-border, in each market |
| Omnichannel retail | Online and physical stores on one platform |
| Travel and hospitality | Complex auth flows, multi-currency, global reach |
| Gaming and streaming | Global audience, many alternative payment methods |
Common trait: genuine multi-market operations with a technical team. Not "large" on its own. A large single-market merchant is usually better served by a transparent domestic processor.
Poor Fit
| Business Type | Better Alternative |
|---|---|
| US-only card-present, any size | Helcim. Published rates, lower markup at every ticket, no sales cycle |
| US-only online, ticket above about $120 | Helcim. Above that ticket its entry band beats Adyen's indicative markup, and its higher bands beat it from a far lower ticket |
| US-only online, small ticket | Still probably Helcim or Stax, but on markup alone Adyen's indicative figure is competitive here. The deciding number is the undisclosed minimum invoice, so get it first |
| SMBs | Stripe or Square |
| Anyone who needs a price today | Anything on this site with a published rate card |
| Non-technical | Square, PayPal |
Common Gotchas
1. The Minimum Invoice
Adyen has no monthly fee. It does have a minimum invoice. If your volume is modest, that minimum is your price. And it's the number Adyen doesn't publish.
Ask two things, not one. "What is the minimum monthly invoice in dollars? And does the $0.13 processing fee count toward it?" The second one decides whether a merchant doing 800 transactions a month clears the minimum on processing fees alone. Or pays a shortfall on top.
The one reported figure is $120 a month or 1,000 transactions a month. It comes from a single affiliate-compensated source, roughly 20 months stale, that gets Adyen's Amex rate wrong. Get your own number.
2. "Indicative" Cuts Both Ways
Adyen's own words: "The fees outlined above are indicative; please get in touch to discuss pricing options." The 0.60% card markup isn't a rate you're entitled to. It's an illustration.
Nor is it a rate you should accept. Adyen's own annual report puts its blended take at 17 basis points, against that 60 basis point illustration. Indicative means the number moves down as well as up. Adyen's own reporting says which direction its average customer ends up in.
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 rather than promised verbally, and a written rate review at 12 months.
3. Payment Method Pricing Varies Widely
Alipay is $0.13 + 3%. SEPA Direct Debit is $0.13 + EUR 0.27. Klarna in the US and Canada is $0.13 + 4.29% + $0.30. Amex Global is $0.13 + 3.95%. One is percentage-heavy, one is effectively flat, one is both. Your effective rate depends entirely on your method mix. Get the full method-by-method schedule from sales before you model anything.
Note the Amex line. 3.95% is Adyen's own published figure. The affiliate-compensated source circulating a lower 3.3% + $0.10 is wrong against the live page.
4. Does the $0.13 Apply to Declines?
Adyen publishes a $0.13 per-transaction processing fee. Does it cover declined attempts, retries and fraud-screening auths? The pricing page doesn't say. Per-attempt billing is common at this tier, and it surprises merchants coming off flat-rate. Ask explicitly. Get the answer in the contract.
5. Multi-Currency Adds Operational Cost
Settlement currency affects fees. Cross-currency conversion carries a markup. Reporting is per-currency. Budget finance team time, not just developer time.
Test to Run
Adyen evaluation, without a rate card:
Question 1: Is your problem actually cross-border?
- What share of your volume is processed cross-border today? ____%
- What is your auth rate on that volume against your domestic auth rate? ____
- Under about 20% on the first question? Adyen's core advantage barely applies. Compare domestic processors instead
Question 2: What does the minimum invoice cost you?
- Ask Adyen for the minimum monthly invoice in dollars, in writing
- Divide it by your monthly volume. That gives your floor rate before a single basis point of processing
- If that number alone is worse than Helcim's published band for your volume, stop here
Question 3: What is the full method-by-method schedule?
- Ask for every payment method you'd use, with the percentage and the fixed component
- Model your actual method mix. Don't model on the 0.60% indicative card markup alone
Question 4: Technical readiness
- Developers available for a multi-month integration: ___
- Is card-present certification in scope, and what is its timeline?
Question 5: The comparison that decides it
- Build the same model for Adyen and for one transparent domestic processor
- Include the local-acquiring interchange saving on your international volume. That's Adyen's real number and it belongs in the model
- Include the minimum invoice
Success criteria: you can state in dollars what Adyen saves you against a published-rate alternative. And the saving comes from local acquiring, not from a markup you were guessing at.
Scale Callout
No published volume threshold makes Adyen available or cheaper. So this section is organized by what you're solving.
Single market, any volume:
- Card-present, Adyen's indicative markup is higher than every published Helcim band at every ticket size. That comparison is settled
- Online, work out your average ticket first. Above about $120 Adyen loses to Helcim's entry band. Above about $28 it loses to the $100K-$500K band. Below those, on the indicative figure alone, Adyen wins
- Against Stax, Adyen is lower in most cells we can check. Stax's subscription only amortises above the volume where Stax stops publishing its price
- Ask Adyen to beat a published quote, and price the minimum invoice into it. If they can't, the decision is made
- Don't assume enterprise pricing means cheap pricing
Two to five markets:
- Local acquiring starts to matter but may not cover the integration cost
- Model the cross-border interchange saving specifically. It's the only line where Adyen structurally wins
Many markets, meaningful international volume:
- This is Adyen's case, and it's a strong one
- The saving lives in interchange, not in markup. Build the model that way
Omnichannel across markets:
- Unified reporting and one reconciliation is worth real money. It never shows up in a rate comparison
- Quantify the finance team hours as part of the business case
Where This Breaks
-
You can't compare what isn't published. Adyen publishes a model and a few method prices. Every comparison on this page against a published-rate processor puts a firm number next to an indicative one.
-
The minimum invoice is the hidden floor. No monthly fee sounds great until you see it. It's the number Adyen won't publish. For smaller merchants it's the whole price.
-
Markup isn't where Adyen wins, card-present. A salesperson pitching Adyen on rate for in-person volume? Ask them to show it on the published numbers. Those numbers don't support it at any ticket size. Online is a real argument at small tickets. Name your average ticket and your volume band before you compare anything.
-
Volume commitments are real. Multi-year contracts with minimums are standard at this tier. Commit only to what you're confident about.
-
Switching costs are large. Once integrated, moving off Adyen is a months-long project. Build that into the decision, not into the regret.
The Adyen Sales Process
Adyen is quote-only, so the process is the product experience. What to expect:
Discovery: volume, geography, growth, payment methods. You provide financials and payment data.
Proposal: rates per payment method and per region, plus the minimum invoice. Get all of it in writing.
Negotiation: bring competing quotes, including published-rate processors. A published Helcim or Stax schedule is a legitimate anchor even if Adyen serves a different market.
Implementation: technical integration, certification for card-present if applicable, testing.
Go-live: gradual rollout by region or percentage.
Plan for a long cycle. That timeline is itself a cost. You could be live on a published-rate processor in a week. So be sure the local-acquiring benefit is real before you start.
Next Steps
Considering Adyen?
- Run the evaluation above, starting with the cross-border question
- Ask for the minimum monthly invoice in dollars, and whether the $0.13 counts toward it, before anything else
- Get the full method-by-method fee schedule, not the indicative card markup
- Ask for the volume step-down schedule written into the contract, not promised verbally
- Ask for written confirmation that interchange and scheme fees pass through at cost, plus a sample settlement file showing all three components separated, before you sign
- Ask whether the $0.13 processing fee applies to declined attempts
- Ask what a chargeback costs, per scheme and per payment method. It isn't published at any tier
- Ask what the FX spread is
What to push toward: a markup well under 0.60% at real volume, a minimum invoice you clear in an ordinary month, and a written rate review at 12 months. Adyen's published $0 early termination fee is unusual for this tier and worth keeping in the contract.
Currently on a flat-rate processor and curious?
- Calculate what share of your volume is cross-border. If it's small, compare Helcim and Stax instead. Both publish rates and neither needs a sales cycle
- If it's large, model the local-acquiring interchange saving. That number is what justifies Adyen
Already on Adyen?
- Pull your effective rate by market and by payment method
- Check your actual markup against the 0.60% indicative figure. If you're above it, you have a conversation to have
- Confirm whether you're being billed per authorization attempt or per successful transaction
- Check the minimum invoice against what you actually spend. If you're always above it, it's not costing you. If you're near it, it's your real price
Sources
| Source | What it gave us | Kind | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| adyen.com/pricing | The $0.13 processing fee, the 0.60% indicative card markup, every payment-method price, the fee and minimum-invoice statements, and the "indicative" caveat | Vendor page | Accessed 2026-08-02 |
| Adyen Annual Report 2025 | FY2025 take rate of 17.0 bps, net revenue, processed volume, EBITDA and POS share | Vendor financial reporting | FY2025 |
| Adyen H1 2025 Shareholder Letter | H1 2025 take rate of 16.8 bps and the H2/H1 2024 comparatives | Vendor financial reporting | Dated 2025-08-14 |
| Merchant Maverick, Adyen review | The reported $120/month or 1,000 transactions/month minimum invoice, and the $0 setup, monthly and early-termination confirmation. Discloses referral commissions from Adyen. Its Amex figure conflicts with Adyen's live page | Review site | Updated 2024-12-10 |
See Also
- Helcim - Publishes a full markup schedule, lower than Adyen's indicative markup card-present at every ticket, and online above the crossover for your band
- Stax - No percentage markup, but a subscription that has to be earned back
- How We Compare Processor Costs - The interchange assumption behind every crossover on this page
- Checkout.com - The other quote-only global option
- Stripe - Easier and faster for single-market businesses
- Square - SMB card-present
- Processor Comparison - Full comparison
- Buying Payments - Selection framework
- Going Global - International expansion and local acquiring
- Auth Optimization - Where routing gains come from