Do online card payments cost more than in-person ones?

Summary

Yes, at every provider compared here. Square, Stripe, Chase, and PayPal each charge a higher percentage online, and every one of them charges a bigger fixed fee per online sale. On small orders the fixed fee does most of the damage, and the rate you pay also depends on which kind of online checkout you use.

A $25 order, four ways

Twenty-five dollars is the average sale this site assumes for U.S. shops. Here is what one such sale costs at each provider's published rate, rounded to the cent.

PayPal goes from the cheapest in person to the most expensive online. Its in-person rate is PayPal Point of Sale, the product formerly called Zettle. Its online rate is Standard Credit and Debit Card Payments, which carries a 49-cent fixed fee. At $25, that 49 cents alone is almost 2% of the sale. The calculator on this site runs the same arithmetic at your own ticket size.

"Online" is several prices, not one

Square. On Square Free, the no-subscription plan, card payments through Square Online or an invoice cost 3.3% + 30¢. The same plan charges 2.9% + 30¢ when you take the payment inside your own website or app through Square's payments APIs. Square Plus and Premium charge 2.9% + 30¢ for both.

PayPal. A shopper who clicks the PayPal button goes through PayPal Checkout at 3.49% + 49¢. A card entered in PayPal's standard card form costs 2.99% + 49¢. With Advanced Credit and Debit Card Payments, where the card fields sit in your own checkout, it is 2.89% + 29¢.

Chase. E-commerce is 2.9% + 25¢. Payment links sent to a customer, and cards keyed in by staff, cost 3.5% + 10¢. So a link emailed to a customer is priced like a phone order, not like a web checkout.

Stripe. Stripe's standard online rate is 2.9% + 30¢ for domestic cards, with 0.5% added for manually entered cards.

When the gateway is a separate bill

Square, Stripe, and PayPal fold the online gateway into the rates above. If you pair a merchant account with a standalone gateway, the gateway is billed on top. At Authorize.Net, the Gateway only plan bills $25 monthly, 10¢ for each transaction, and another 10¢ for each day's batch. The 10¢ applies to refunds, voids, and declines as well as to sales. How the processor, gateway, and merchant account split the work is covered in the article on who does what in a card payment.

Sources

• squareup.com/help/us/en/article/5068-what-are-square-s-fees
• squareup.com/us/en/payments/our-fees
• stripe.com/us/pricing
• chase.com/business/payments/merchant-fees
• paypal.com/us/business/paypal-business-fees
• paypal.com/us/business/pos-system/pricing
• authorize.net/sign-up/pricing.html

Related on this site

• Do you need a merchant account, a processor, and a gateway, or can one company cover all three?
• Why does a keyed-in or online card payment cost a merchant more than a tapped one?
• What does it cost you when a customer pays with a card from another country?
• The three numbers behind a card rate
• Effective rate calculator
• Every provider we hold, and which publish a rate

Written by Kaz (pen name). Figures are copied from providers' published pricing pages on the dates shown. We have not used these products. Corrections: contact form.