topics

Payment Gateway Cost Topics

Every concept, model, hidden cost, and procurement question covered on the site. Use this as the table of contents for everything that is not vendor-specific.

All topic pages

Each page is self-contained and links back to relevant vendor pages and to /methodology.

Payment gateway fees explained

The five-layer fee stack: interchange, assessment, gateway, processor markup, ancillary.

Pricing models compared

Flat-rate vs interchange-plus vs tiered vs subscription, with vendor mapping.

Interchange-plus vs flat-rate

At what GMV and ticket size does interchange-plus actually beat flat-rate?

Interchange fees explained

What Visa, Mastercard, Amex and Discover charge. Regulated debit context.

Chargeback fees by gateway

Per-vendor dispute fee table, refundable-on-win flags, Stripe's two-tier model.

PCI compliance cost

SAQ-A self-assessment to PCI-DSS Level 1 RoC. Cost ranges per merchant level.

High-risk merchant cost

Rate premiums and rolling reserves on high-risk verticals.

International and FX fees

Cross-border surcharge plus FX margin per gateway. Wise at mid-market for receiving.

ACH vs card fees

Break-even ticket size where ACH beats card. Settlement timing trade-off.

Integration and developer cost

Engineering weeks per vendor. Build vs buy, SCA/3DS work, ongoing maintenance.

API fees and webhook costs

Where per-call pricing exists. Webhook volume, retries, and reliability cost.

Gateway vs processor

Are these the same thing? The four-party model and who you actually pay.

How payment gateways work

Authorisation, clearing, settlement. End-to-end transaction flow diagram.

Cost for small business

Under $500K GMV, which gateway is genuinely cheapest.

The procurement playbook: build the shortlist, run the bake-off, negotiate the deal.

The 27 questions to ask every payment gateway in a quote-only RFP.

Implementation cost

Internal dev cost, vendor onboarding cost, certification work, parallel-run cost.

The fees that never show in a headline rate: PCI, reserves, statement, batch, FX margin.

Cost for mid-market

$5M-$50M/yr GMV: when to leave flat-rate, where IC+ wins, what to negotiate.

Cost for enterprise

$50M+/yr GMV: quote-only economics, multi-acquirer routing, scheme-fee normalisation.

Vs alternative categories

Payment gateway cost vs API gateway cost vs chargeback cost. What overlaps, what does not.

Payment gateway cost 2026: ultimate guide

The whole site condensed into one definitive piece of cost analysis.

verified Last verified June 2026