Ultimate guide, verified June 2026

Payment Gateway Cost 2026: The Ultimate Guide

One reference covering every published rate, every pricing model, every quote-only acquirer, with worked examples at four volume bands and break-even math for every model transition. Linked out to per-vendor and per-topic detail pages.

Direct answer
Three families of vendor: flat-rate (Stripe, PayPal, Square, Braintree, Amazon Pay, Shopify Payments), published interchange-plus (Helcim is the only one), and quote-only (Adyen, Worldpay, Checkout.com, NMI, Chase, Elavon, Global Payments, Fiserv). Wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay) are pass-through and add no merchant fee. BNPL (Klarna, Afterpay) is a conversion lever priced 2-3x cards.

The three families

  1. 1
    Flat-rate
    One published % and a fixed fee.
  2. 2
    Interchange-plus
    Pass-through + margin.
  3. 3
    Subscription / membership
    Fixed monthly + pass-through.
  4. 4
    Quote-only
    No public rate card.

Four volume bands

FeatureUnder $10K/mo$10K-$100K/mo$100K-$1M/moOver $1M/mo
Default winnerSquare / StripeStripe / HelcimHelcim / quote-onlyQuote-only acquirer
Pricing modelFlat-rateFlat-rate or pub IC+Published IC+Negotiated IC+
Get a quote fromNo needNo needHelcim + one acquirerThree+ acquirers, RFP

Related

Master rate table
Every vendor sorted cheapest first.
Pricing models
Break-even math.
Buying guide
Step-by-step.
Last verified June 2026. Next review September 2026. Rates change without notice; always confirm directly with the vendor before signing a contract.