Every option, read off their own pricing pages on 20 September 2026

You know your headline rate. You almost certainly do not know what you pay.

A rate is not a price. 2.9% plus 30 cents and 2.6% plus 15 cents cannot be ranked without knowing the size of your average sale, because on a small one the fixed part is most of the cost and on a large one it rounds to nothing. So this page does the sum instead of ranking them.

I sell none of these and I take no cut of anything you sell. That is the only reason this page is worth reading rather than the comparisons you will find, which were mostly written by one of the companies on it.

The arithmetic

Three numbers of yours, and every option below has a real price.

What goes through the card in a month, what an average sale is, and how much of it happens in person. That is all it takes. Two worked examples follow so you can see the shape — put your own three numbers in their place and the sum is identical.

A shop

Assumed, not measured: $15,000 a month through the card, an average sale of $45, and seven dollars in ten taken over a counter. These are my numbers for the example, not a claim about what your business does.

Option	A month	A year	What that really is, as a rate
An invoice and a bank transfer	$0	$0	0%
Venmo, Cash App and Zelle	$356.92	$4,283.04	2.38%
Stripe	$455.65	$5,467.80	3.04%
PayPal	$467.47	$5,609.64	3.12%
Square	$486.45	$5,837.40	3.24%
Payments built into software you already pay for	This is the rate on money taken through your website. The share you take over a counter runs through something else, so it cannot be costed on this line.
The terminal your bank sold you	Nothing here can be costed, and that is the finding. Toast publishes no processing rate at all — its pricing page says "custom pricing" and "simple, flat rate" with no number on it. Clover publishes rates only for a system bought directly from Clover online, and its page says so; the one a bank or reseller sells you is a different rate on a different contract. Ask for the number in writing before you sign anything.
Somebody else becomes the seller	These sell digital things over the internet. There is no version of this that takes a card at a counter, so the in-person share of your money cannot run through it.
An account in your name, and I connect it	I add nothing to what you are charged, so this costs exactly whatever the option you picked above costs. There is no figure to print here and inventing one would be inventing a fee.

Cheapest to dearest, with the ones that cannot be worked out kept at the bottom rather than dropped. The gap between the top and the bottom of what could be priced is $5,837.40 a year on those numbers.

A business that only exists online

Assumed, not measured: $8,000 a month through the card, an average sale of $80, and nothing taken in person. These are my numbers for the example, not a claim about what your business does.

Option	A month	A year	What that really is, as a rate
An invoice and a bank transfer	$0	$0	0%
Venmo, Cash App and Zelle	$162	$1,944	2.03%
Stripe	$262	$3,144	3.28%
Payments built into software you already pay for	$291	$3,492	3.64%
Square	$294	$3,528	3.68%
PayPal	$328.20	$3,938.40	4.1%
Somebody else becomes the seller	$450	$5,400	5.63%
The terminal your bank sold you	Nothing here can be costed, and that is the finding. Toast publishes no processing rate at all — its pricing page says "custom pricing" and "simple, flat rate" with no number on it. Clover publishes rates only for a system bought directly from Clover online, and its page says so; the one a bank or reseller sells you is a different rate on a different contract. Ask for the number in writing before you sign anything.
An account in your name, and I connect it	I add nothing to what you are charged, so this costs exactly whatever the option you picked above costs. There is no figure to print here and inventing one would be inventing a fee.

Cheapest to dearest, with the ones that cannot be worked out kept at the bottom rather than dropped. The gap between the top and the bottom of what could be priced is $5,400 a year on those numbers.

Usually the answer is to change nothing, and know your number.

Moving processor costs you a weekend and loses your saved cards, so unless the gap is four figures a year it is not worth doing. The reason to read this is so that nobody can quote you a headline again without you knowing what it turns into.

What the sum assumes, stated plainly: today's advertised rates, every sale the same size, and no card crossing a border. That last one is left out on purpose — currency conversion is charged on top and the spread runs from one percent to four across this page, so it cannot be worked out without knowing which currencies you take. It is arithmetic on published figures rather than a forecast, and the moment it needs a forecast it stops belonging here.

One at a time

The same 5 questions, asked of every one of them.

Grouped by how you ended up with the rate you have, because for most businesses nobody ever chose it. Mine is on the list and gets the same treatment as the rest.

You chose it

Stripe

Chosen deliberately, usually for a website

2.9% + 30c online, 2.7% + 5c in person

What it costs you to be paid: No monthly fee and no minimum. Online is 2.9% plus 30 cents; in person is 2.7% plus 5 cents, and a further 10 cents if you tap the card against a phone. A bank transfer is 0.8% and stops at five dollars however large the invoice, which is the cheapest way on this page to collect a big number. International cards add 1.5% and a currency conversion adds 1%.
When the money actually reaches your bank: On a schedule you set — rolling, weekly or monthly. A disputed payment costs fifteen dollars to receive and fifteen more to answer, and you get the second one back if you win.
What you take with you if you leave: Your customer records and your card details both move, because Stripe will migrate saved cards to another processor on request. Your payment history is exportable. This is the strongest leaving story here and it is the reason developers pick it.
What it does better than I do: Everything about being a website. It is the one built for a developer to wire into a page, the documentation is the best in the industry, and if your business lives on the internet rather than on a street this is the default for good reasons.
Who fixes it when it breaks: Stripe, by email, chat or phone, around the clock. You will be talking to somebody technical, which helps if your problem is technical and does not if your problem is that you cannot find a button.

You chose it

Square

Chosen deliberately, usually for a counter

2.6% + 15c in person, 3.3% + 30c online on the free plan

What it costs you to be paid: The free plan is 2.6% plus 15 cents at the counter and 3.3% plus 30 cents online. Paying $49 a month for Plus drops those to 2.5% and 2.9%. A typed-in card is 3.5% plus 15 cents on every plan. Watch the bank transfer line: on the free plan an invoice paid by transfer is 1% with no ceiling, so a ten thousand dollar invoice costs a hundred dollars, where Plus caps the same fee at ten.
When the money actually reaches your bank: Next day on every plan, at no charge, which is genuinely unusual. Same-day costs extra. Square is also the one most often reported to hold funds on a newly busy account, and there is no appeal you can telephone.
What you take with you if you leave: Your customer list and your item catalog export. Your card-on-file records do not travel, so anything on a subscription has to be re-entered by the customer, and that is where a move actually hurts.
What it does better than I do: Being one thing instead of five. Register, card reader, online store, invoices, payroll and a bank account that all already know about each other, for nothing a month. For a shop or a salon that is worth more than a fifth of a point on the rate.
Who fixes it when it breaks: Square, and there is a telephone number that a person answers during business hours. The hardware is theirs too, so a dead reader is one conversation rather than two.

You chose it

PayPal

Chosen deliberately, or inherited from a buyer who insisted

3.49% + 49c through a PayPal checkout, 2.29% + 9c in person

What it costs you to be paid: The dearest common rate here. A PayPal checkout is 3.49% plus 49 cents; a plain card through them is 2.99% plus 49 cents; a QR code at a counter is 2.29% plus 9 cents. An invoice paid by bank transfer is 1% capped at ten dollars. A chargeback is twenty dollars and a dispute is fifteen, thirty if you have a lot of them. Selling abroad adds 1.5%, and converting the currency costs a further 3% to 4% — the widest conversion spread on this page.
When the money actually reaches your bank: Quickly into your PayPal balance, then free to your bank on the standard route or 1.5% to have it now. Read the risk clause before you rely on any of that: PayPal reserves the right to raise your rate by up to five percentage points on thirty days notice if it decides your account looks risky, and it is the only company on this sheet that publishes such a term.
What you take with you if you leave: Very little that matters. The buyer relationship is PayPal’s — they hold the payment method and the buyer trusts them rather than you — so leaving means your repeat customers have to pay you a new way.
What it does better than I do: Getting a stranger to finish the purchase. A buyer who will not type a card number into a small business website will click a button they already have an account with, and for a new shop with no reputation that is the difference between a sale and a bounce.
Who fixes it when it breaks: PayPal, eventually. Support is the weakest thing about them and the account-freeze stories are real, but they are also thirty years old and they are not going to disappear with your money.

Nobody chose it

Payments built into software you already pay for

Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, QuickBooks — it came with the subscription

2.9% + 30c, and the rate moves with the plan rather than with you

What it costs you to be paid: The rate rides on the subscription, which is the whole point of this card. Squarespace charges 2.9% plus 30 cents on its two cheaper plans and 2.5% on its dearest, so the same sale costs different money depending on a website decision. Wix is 2.9% plus 30 cents — except American Express, which is 3.7%. Shopify is 2.9% plus 30 cents, and 2% more again if you use any processor other than theirs. QuickBooks is 2.99% on an invoice and 2.5% in person. Squarespace charges 3.2% on a rewards card and Wix charges more for Amex, and neither of those is on the page you read when you chose the plan.
When the money actually reaches your bank: On the platform’s schedule, usually two days. The thing to know is that a failed subscription payment can take the storefront down, and the payments stop with it — the money and the website share a switch.
What you take with you if you leave: The orders usually export. The payment history often does not, and neither do the saved cards, so a subscription business that moves platforms asks every customer to pay again. That is the most expensive sentence on this card.
What it does better than I do: Not making you do anything. It is already on, it is already connected to the catalog and the tax settings and the order emails, and for a business selling twenty things online the saved afternoon is worth more than the rate difference.
Who fixes it when it breaks: The platform, and only during their hours. When the payment breaks you are explaining a payments problem to a website company, which is a worse conversation than it sounds.

Nobody chose it

The terminal your bank sold you

Clover, Toast and the readers a bank or reseller puts on your counter

No published rate you can rely on — ask, in writing

What it costs you to be paid: Bought straight from Clover, a retail system is 2.6% plus 10 cents on the cheapest tier and 2.3% plus 10 cents above it, with a typed-in card at 3.5% plus 10 cents, hardware from $349 to $2,648 or spread over thirty-six months, and software from $84.95 a month. Clover’s own page says those prices are only available online. Toast starts at $0 a month for a starter kit and $69 for the software, and does not publish a processing rate anywhere. So the honest answer is that you cannot know what this costs until somebody quotes you, and a thirty-six month term is the usual price of finding out.
When the money actually reaches your bank: Next day as a rule, or within minutes for 1.75% on Clover. The contract is the thing to read rather than the payout schedule: these are the only options here sold on a multi-year term, and leaving early is the expensive part.
What you take with you if you leave: The hardware, if you bought rather than leased it, and usually nothing else. The menu, the item catalog and the order history live in their system, and a restaurant that has run four years on one of these is not moving in a weekend.
What it does better than I do: Running the actual floor. Toast for a restaurant and Clover for a busy retail counter do table management, kitchen tickets, shift handover and stock in a way nothing else here approaches, and a rate is a poor reason to refuse the tool that runs your business.
Who fixes it when it breaks: Whoever sold it to you, which may be your bank rather than the manufacturer, and that is worth establishing on day one rather than on a Saturday night.

Nobody chose it

Venmo, Cash App and Zelle

The app you already had, now taking business money

Venmo business profile 1.9% + 10c — the cheapest headline on this page

What it costs you to be paid: A Venmo business profile is 1.9% plus 10 cents, or 2.29% plus 9 cents if the customer taps a card against your phone. Cash App for Business is 2.6% plus 15 cents, or 3% for a tap. Zelle charges nothing at all, because Zelle is not a processor — it moves money between bank accounts and your bank decides whether you can use it for business. Taking business money on a PERSONAL Venmo account is the expensive mistake: the sender can mark it as goods and services and you are charged 2.99% on a payment you thought was free.
When the money actually reaches your bank: Fast, and that is the appeal. It is also the risk: Zelle is irreversible and Zelle’s own guidance is to treat it like cash and only use it with people you trust. None of the three gives you what a card network gives you when a customer disputes a charge.
What you take with you if you leave: Nothing, because nothing was ever yours. There is no customer list, no exportable payment history a bookkeeper will accept without argument, and no record tying a payment to an invoice. At tax time that is the bill for the cheap rate.
What it does better than I do: Price, and it is not close. Venmo’s business rate beats every card processor on this page, the customer already has the app, and for a market stall or a mobile trade taking twenty payments a week it may genuinely be the right answer. Get a business profile rather than using your personal one.
Who fixes it when it breaks: Nobody you can telephone. Support is a form, the answer takes days, and for Zelle the answer comes from your bank rather than from Zelle.

You handed the selling over

Somebody else becomes the seller

Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, and Stripe’s Managed Payments

5% + 50c, and they owe the tax instead of you

What it costs you to be paid: Paddle and Lemon Squeezy both charge 5% plus 50 cents, with no monthly fee. Stripe’s Managed Payments charges 3.5% on top of its ordinary payment fees, which works out dearer than either on most sale sizes. That is roughly double what Stripe alone costs, and what you are buying with the difference is that they become the legal seller: they calculate, collect and remit sales tax, VAT and GST in the countries you sell into, and they carry the fraud and the chargebacks.
When the money actually reaches your bank: On a payout schedule rather than continuously, typically twice a month, so your cash sits with them longer than it would anywhere else here. A refund comes out of a future payout.
What you take with you if you leave: This is the card where leaving costs most, and for a reason people miss: the buyer’s receipt has their name on it, not yours. Every subscription is legally theirs, so moving means re-signing every customer, and the chargeback history you built does not follow you.
What it does better than I do: Making a tax problem disappear. If you sell software or a download to buyers in several countries, working out where you have crossed a registration threshold is a real job with real penalties, and handing the whole thing to somebody who does it for a living is worth five percent. For a business selling to one country it is money for nothing. If what you sell is physical rather than a download, a marketplace does the same thing to you without calling it that — the store sheet asks the same question about every platform on it, because who the legal seller is decides who owes the tax there too.
Who fixes it when it breaks: They do, including your customer’s support email about a charge, because as far as the card network is concerned they sold it.

No card at all

An invoice and a bank transfer

What plenty of trades and consultancies already do

Nothing, and it is the only free row on this page

What it costs you to be paid: Nothing. You send an invoice, they transfer the money, and no percentage comes off it. What it costs instead is not money: somebody has to notice the payment arrived, match it to the invoice, and chase the ones that did not. That is an hour a week you are already spending if you do this today.
When the money actually reaches your bank: One to three days for an ordinary transfer, and there is no hold, no reserve and nobody deciding your account looks risky. Once it is in, it is in — a transfer is not reversible the way a card payment is, which cuts both ways.
What you take with you if you leave: Everything, because there is nothing to leave. The records are your own bookkeeping and the relationship is with the customer rather than with a platform.
What it does better than I do: Cost, and it is not close. It is free, it needs no account and no approval, and for a trade billing ten customers a month in four figures it is very hard to beat — a card on a $6,000 job costs about $174 and a transfer costs nothing. Consider a card only for the customers who will not pay any other way.
Who fixes it when it breaks: Your bank, and it almost never breaks. What breaks is somebody paying late, and no processor on this page fixes that either.

Mine

An account in your name, and I connect it

Whichever of the above you pick, opened by you and wired in by me

Their rate, with nothing added by me

What it costs you to be paid: The processor’s own rate, and not a cent more. I take no percentage, no markup and no share of anything you sell — that is a term in the agreement rather than a promise. If I am building you a site, one payment link connected to one page is included in it. If you have no account with a processor yet, opening one with you is quoted before it starts, because that runs on their identity checks rather than on my time. An actual store — a basket, a checkout, stock counts — is separate work with its own price, and I do not build shipping by address or sales tax by state at any price.
When the money actually reaches your bank: Whenever your processor says, because I am not in the path and never will be. The money goes from your customer to your account without passing through anything of mine.
What you take with you if you leave: All of it, because none of it was ever mine. The account is opened in your name with your email and your bank details, I am never an owner on it, and there is nothing for you to take back from me later.
What it does better than I do: Nothing at all, on price — I am not a processor and I do not compete with one. What I do instead is read the table above with your actual numbers in it, tell you which row you are in today, and say plainly when the answer is to change nothing.
Who fixes it when it breaks: The processor, for anything about the money, because that is their job and their license. Me, for anything about the thing I built that points at them.

Why check any of this yourself

The comparison you find is usually written by somebody on it.

Intuit publishes a table comparing QuickBooks against other processors. In September I read it beside those companies' own pages and two of its figures were out of date — a bank transfer rate and a card rate, both stale rather than invented. I checked it again ten days later and they had refreshed the table and fixed both.

So that is a fair table today, and I am telling you it got fixed rather than leaving the catch on my page where it would age better than the truth. What has not changed is the shape of the thing: it is their table, they refresh it when it suits them, and the page is still headed as a comparison against two companies while the table now shows one.

That is the whole reason every figure here carries the date I read it and a link to the company's own page. You should not have to take my word for any of it, including the part where I tell you a competitor is being straight with you.

Before you ask me for anything

What I build, what I will not, and what has to be quoted first.

The same three lists sit on every sheet I publish, because the answer does not change with the subject. The middle one is the one worth your time.

What I can build for you

All of it ends up in accounts opened in your name, and none of it needs me afterwards.

A website that is yours outright: The files, the domain, the hosting account and every login open in your name. There is no leaving, because you were never standing on anything of mine.
A tool built for the way your business actually works: Your rate card, your roster, your categories, your trade’s words. It arrives twice — as a page at your own web address, and as one file that opens with the internet switched off and needs no login and no subscription.
One payment link, connected to one page: Tested with a real payment before handover and refunded afterwards, on an account that is yours throughout. This is included in a build under §1.7 of the Scope, and I am never an owner on the account.
A form that reaches your inbox: Names, emails and phone numbers are ordinary work and always were. What a form collects and how long it is kept is written into the privacy page the build includes.
The arithmetic on your own numbers, printed where you can check it: No model, no forecast, no industry average and no suggested rate. Your figures through a sum you can follow, and a plain sentence wherever the sum cannot be done.
A read of what your Google listing shows the public: Checked against what your site says, so the two agree. This needs no access to anything of yours — it is the same page any customer sees.
Whichever processor you picked, wired to the thing I built: I take no percentage, no markup and no share of anything you sell. That is a term in the agreement rather than a promise, and it means this costs exactly what your processor charges.

What I will not build, and why

Two different reasons, kept apart on purpose. Some of these would make a promise you already hold in writing false. The rest I could build and will not, and the reason is the same each time — somebody else has to keep it correct for years and does.

Anything that sees, stores or transmits a card or bank number: The master agreement says outright that I do not see, store, transmit or process payment card data. A payment link hands your customer to your provider’s own page, on your provider’s own address, and nothing about the way I build changes that.
A seat on your Google Business Profile: Both Scopes say that nothing in them asks you to grant me any access to it, and Google’s own rules for third parties require the business to hold its profile at all times. The listing is yours to create, to verify and to keep.
A system that holds records carrying their own legal regime: Patient notes, medical history and the like. Section 3 of the Scope says I do not build systems that hold them. A practice holding such records can still have a website — the site simply does not touch that material.
Legal, tax, accounting, employment or financial advice: Named in section 3 of the Scope as outside every build. I will tell you who the merchant of record is, because that decides who owes the sales tax. Whether you owe any is a question for your accountant and the answer is worth paying for.
A way into your computer when you are not sitting at it: The data-handling note in your pack says I have no way to do it and do not want one. Every remote session needs you present and letting me in, and it ends when you close it.
Sales tax worked out by state: I could build this and I am not going to. Rates and rules change without notice and it has to stay correct for years after I have been paid. A company whose entire business is that maintains it, and I will name the one that does rather than sell you a version of it that rots.
Shipping worked out from a customer’s address: Same answer and the same reason. Carrier rates, zones and surcharges move on somebody else’s schedule, and a shipping calculator that is six months out of date overcharges your customers quietly.
Online booking, invoicing and payment chasing, review requests, staff scheduling, waiting lists: Every one of these is a category a platform you already pay for has taken, or will inside a year. Where you need one, I will say which product does it. That answer is worth more to you than a worse version of it with my name on.
Getting you a better rate from your processor: Several of them do negotiate above a volume floor, and one publishes an invitation to call. That call is yours to make, on a contract I am not a party to, and standing in the middle of it would help nobody.

What has to be quoted before it starts

Real work, quoted in writing before anything starts, and never folded into a build price to win one.

An online store — a basket, a checkout and stock counts: A real store is a different build at a different price, quoted in writing before it starts. One payment link on one page is a much smaller thing and comes with a build.
Opening a payment account from scratch: This runs on your identity documents, your bank account and a verification process the provider controls, which neither of us can hurry. Where you already hold an account, connecting it is included.
Setting up or running your Google Business Profile: Separate work with its own price, and still in your name when it is done. Reading what the listing already shows is included; holding it is not.
Any account your own customers log in to: Logins are the largest single step in cost of anything on this page. A site that has them is a different build, and pretending otherwise at quoting time is how a build goes wrong in month two.
Connecting to another system you already run: Possible, often useful, and never assumed. It gets named in the Statement of Work with its own price, because the cost lives in the other system rather than in mine.
A second tool, a further phase, or anything else named in section 3: Quoted as its own fixed price. Small work outside a Scope runs at the hourly rate on the rate card, with thirty minutes the smallest unit invoiced.

What this is not

Not a recommendation, and not something I sell.

I am not a payment processor, I take no percentage of anything you sell, and I earn nothing whichever of these you pick. The account opens in your name and stays yours, always. If I am building you a site, one payment link connected to one page comes with it; opening a processor account from scratch is quoted first, because that runs on their identity checks rather than on my time. A store with a basket and stock counts is separate work with its own price, and I do not build shipping by address or sales tax by state at any price.

It is also not tax advice, and the line matters. The cards say who the merchant of record is, because that decides who owes the sales tax. What they will never do is work out whether you owe any. That is a question for your accountant and the answer is worth paying for.

And it is not a list I keep current by remembering to. Every figure above is registered with the date it was read, it expires on its own, and this page carries that date in plain sight. One line on this site went stale exactly that way and the register is what caught it.

If you want the sum done on your own numbers

Send me the three numbers and I will send the table back.

A month of card volume, an average sale, and roughly how much of it is taken in person. No charge and no meeting — you will get the same table you see above with your figures in it, and often the answer is that you are already in the right row.

Send me the three numbers The same reading, for websites And for selling online

Every rate and every term on this page was read off those companies' own pages on 20 September 2026. They change them without announcing it, so if you are weighing this up, go and read them again yourself.