Although many merchants actively use payment gateways for processing credit cards, not everyone understands what credit card processing fees are, how they are calculated, and how to minimize them. Let’s take a closer look at all these points.

The definition of credit cards processing fees

Processing is an activity that includes collecting, processing, and distributing information on transactions with bank cards to settlement participants, carried out by a processing center.
Credit Card Processing Fees: The percentage of the amount of each transaction that the payment card company charges and the payment intermediaries involved in the processing of the transaction.
In addition to the standard fees, the merchant service provider (payment processor) that processes your credit card payments also charges a small fee. Together they form the processing fee that you, as a merchant, pay when accepting credit card payments.

How to calculate credit card processing fees?

So how are seller fees calculated? Various payment processing pricing models offer business owners a variety of options. Let’s take a look at the main components of payment processing fees.

Interchange commission

The commission is charged by issuing banks for processing credit and debit card payments. The process for deducting interchange fees is simple:

1. The merchant accepts payment by credit or debit card for the product or service;
2. The acquiring bank transfers funds to the merchant account;
3. The issuing bank withdraws funds from the client’s account, deducts the commission, and transmits the final amount to the merchant’s corporate account.

Interchange fees make up the bulk of the fees merchants pay and are charged as a percentage of each transaction, plus a small, fixed amount, roughly $ 0.2-0.5.

The following factors affect the value of the commission for an interbank exchange:

• Business type. Depending on which category your business belongs to, the commissions will differ slightly. Also, banks charge a large commission for high-risk types of business, such as gambling, forex, nutra;
• Bank card type. The size of the commission is influenced by the type of card used, credit or debit. In addition, the category of the card is also essential. Whether your card is a bonus, business, or universal;
• Payment network type. There are 4 leading credit card issuers: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover. Their commissions, albeit insignificantly, differ;
• Transaction type. Whether the customer pays online, through a POS terminal, or contactless, this is also considered when calculating fees.

Assessment fee

The appraisal fee is a tiny fixed percentage applied to the total monthly volume for a particular card type.

Payment processor commission

Payment processor fees are commissions that payment companies charge merchants for processing payments from customers.
The size of the payment processing fee depends on the pricing model preferred by the payment processor and the level of risk of the transaction.
High-risk transactions such as e-commerce transactions require higher processing fees than low-risk transactions because the risk of fraud is significantly higher.

To know more about the Payor tariffs, please, visit the Pricing page.

What are the average credit card processing fees?

Above, we have listed the components that form the average commission on credit cards.
Now let’s compare credit card processing fees of the most popular payment systems for small businesses:

Payor

International payment processor and official partner of Visa / Mastercard. The company provides acquiring services worldwide, except for sanctioned countries, and has more than 300 payment methods.
Payor processing fees: