Compare payment offers beyond the headline fee
Compare the same customer mix, transaction sizes and operating costs before choosing a provider. A low percentage tells you very little on its own.
Compare the same transactions
Start with a representative month. Count successful payments, attempted payments, refunds and recurring collections separately. Split the volume by payment method, card issuer market and consumer versus commercial cards where the data is available. Business customers alone do not establish the commercial-card share.
Ask each provider to price the same mix. State the merchant country and whether the offer is standard, negotiated or interchange-plus. A comparison is only useful if its assumptions travel with it.
| Check | Ask your provider |
|---|---|
| Commercial cards | Are commercial cards priced separately? Which Amex terms apply to us? |
| International payments | Which cross-border and conversion costs apply to our mix? |
| Small payments | How much does the fixed fee change the total cost? |
| Operational work | Who matches payouts, fees and refunds to orders? |
Illustrative calculation, not a provider tariff: Offer A costs 1% + 0.30 per payment; offer B costs 2% with no fixed fee. A 10-unit payment costs 0.40 with A and 0.20 with B. At 100 units, A costs 1.30 and B costs 2.00. Neither offer wins for every basket.
A checklist to reuse
- Merchant legal country and sales channels
- Customer markets and actual card categories
- Small, typical and large transaction values
- Monthly count and turnover, including a low-volume scenario
Ask about the costs outside the headline
Compare commercial Visa/Mastercard and Amex directly if these cards are relevant to your customers. An Amex acceptance agreement can have different terms from the commercial-card rate in another contract. There is no universal cheaper network: the market, contract, channel and actual transaction mix decide.
Distinguish the currency charged from the currency paid out. Ask when conversion occurs and whether issuer-country supplements apply even without conversion. Fixed costs, minimums and optional billing products also belong in the monthly total.
A checklist to reuse
- Percentage, fixed, monthly and minimum fees
- Cross-border and currency-conversion charges
- Refunds, disputes and fees that are not returned
- Terminal hardware, billing add-ons and payout charges
Check what happens after payment
Have the provider walk through a failed recurring payment, a partial refund and a payout containing several orders. Your team needs a reliable way to understand what happened and resolve exceptions. The cheapest processing quote may require more manual work.
If you already have a provider, separate limitations of the provider from limitations of the integration. Better reporting, a missing payment method or improved failure handling may solve the problem without migrating customer payment details.
A checklist to reuse
- Who sees a failure and who acts on it?
- Can bookkeeping match payouts, fees and refunds to orders?
- Do required methods support your country, currency and recurring model?
- What will migration, maintenance and support actually require?
Make a comparison you can defend
Create one sheet with your assumptions, a typical-month cost calculation, a low-volume scenario and the operational gaps. Keep uncertain items explicitly marked as unknown. Do not turn an unconfirmed quote into a firm budget.
Next, send the same questions to each provider. Ask for written answers and an example invoice using your mix. Test the most awkward real workflow before signing. Use the payment checklist below to turn your situation into a practical list of checks.
A checklist to reuse
- Same inputs for every offer
- Written confirmation of market and pricing arrangement
- A named owner for operational exceptions
- A dated decision with unresolved questions attached
Sources and upkeep
These sources inform the guidance above. The examples and checklists are modeleven’s editorial recommendations, not promises of results. Sources reviewed 8 September 2026.