The library
Buyer guides, head-to-head comparisons and industry analysis — built on the same six criteria we use to grade every processor in the catalogue.
Card readers for vending machines, laundromats and car washes charge around 6% a sale, plus a monthly fee per machine. That looks expensive until you see what the card networks charge on a $1.50 purchase. What Cantaloupe, Nayax and Stripe charge, and the rules that apply when nobody is standing at the till.
10 min readOctober 2, 2026
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Church giving apps quote rates that look alike until you put the same gift through each one. On a $100 card gift the fee runs from about $2.30 to $5.29, bank gifts differ by more than a factor of thirty on a $1,000 tithe, and Visa has a discounted rate churches can qualify for that a flat-rate app does not pass on.
11 min readOctober 2, 2026
Before you change processors, find out whether your card machine is coming with you. Clover, Toast, Lightspeed, Helcim and Shopify say their hardware works only with their own payments. A standard terminal can usually be reprogrammed, and a 'free' one usually has to go back.
8 min readOctober 1, 2026
A gift card looks free to run until you read the fee table. Square and SpotOn charge a load fee when a card is sold, Shopify charges some newer stores when one is redeemed, and Toast and Clover do not publish theirs. Then there are the federal and state rules on expiry, fees and cash back.
10 min readOctober 1, 2026
HSA and FSA cards run on the ordinary card networks, but the issuer only approves them at the right kind of merchant. A clinic is usually set already. A pharmacy needs the 90% rule. Anyone else needs an inventory system most small-business processors do not offer.
8 min readSeptember 30, 2026
Card testers use your checkout to find out which stolen card numbers still work. On a flat-rate plan the declines cost you nothing in processing fees. On a gateway or pass-through plan every attempt can be a line on your statement, and the approved attempts can cost more than the declines.
9 min readSeptember 30, 2026
Most processors will hand your stored card numbers to your next one, but only processor to processor, and little else comes with them. We read the export and import terms of eight providers on 29 September 2026: what moves, what stays behind, and how long it takes.
10 min readSeptember 29, 2026
Authorizing a card now and charging it later is how bars, hotels, rentals and made-to-order businesses work. The card networks set the outer limit and your processor usually sets a shorter one. We compared Visa's rules with the published windows at Stripe, Square, Toast, Helcim and Clover on 29 September 2026.
8 min readSeptember 29, 2026
Since 1 June 2026 BigCommerce bills a fee on orders run through processors outside its approved list, as Shopify does for anything but Shopify Payments. We read both fee schedules, plus Squarespace's and WooCommerce's, and worked out when an outside processor can still come out cheaper.
10 min readSeptember 28, 2026
Most point-of-sale systems can store card payments during an outage and send them later. None of them guarantees those payments. We read the offline-mode terms of twelve providers and Visa's rules on 26 September 2026: the limits, the deadlines and what wipes stored payments for good.
10 min readSeptember 28, 2026
iDEAL, the way most Dutch shoppers pay online, is being replaced by Wero by the end of 2027. What changes for a merchant is disputes, subscriptions and, from 2029, the price. We read the scheme's, the banks' and three providers' own pages on 26 September 2026.
10 min readSeptember 28, 2026
Venmo, PayPal, Cash App and Zelle all let a small business get paid from an app its customers already have. We read each one's fee page and terms on 25 September 2026: what receiving a payment costs, whether a personal account is allowed, who carries a dispute, and when a card processor starts to make more sense.
11 min readSeptember 25, 2026
Cash discount, dual pricing and surcharging are all sold as zero-fee processing. The card networks and the law treat them very differently, and the difference is which price you post. We read the rules, the statutes and six providers' own terms on 25 September 2026.
10 min readSeptember 25, 2026
From 15 October 2026 a UPI payment above ₹2,000 costs the merchant 0.4%, capped at ₹300. What the government's FAQ actually says, who stays exempt, and why an online seller's bill moves less than a shopkeeper's.
9 min readSeptember 24, 2026
Square, Shopify and Clover all charge a lower in-person card rate on their more expensive retail plans. We worked out the sales volume at which each upgrade pays for itself, what one shop pays across five retail systems, and where the contracts differ.
10 min readSeptember 24, 2026
What a UK small business pays for a card machine in 2026: the transaction rate, the monthly fee, the hardware and the contract, from each provider's own pages. Four of the nine will not print a rate, and the 18-month contract cap does not reach every one of them.
9 min readSeptember 23, 2026
Jobber and Housecall Pro both process on Stripe and both look cheap on a consumer card tapped at the door. The differences are in business cards, keyed cards, bank payments on big jobs, same-day payouts and financing. Here is each one on the same jobs.
10 min readSeptember 23, 2026
Salon software is sold on its monthly price, which is the smallest of the three numbers you pay. The card rate is bigger, and the marketplace commission on a new client is nearly ten times the card rate. Fresha, Square, Vagaro, Mindbody and Clover on one basis, with the arithmetic on a $120 service.
8 min readSeptember 22, 2026
Authorize.net publishes every gateway fee it charges, down to the ten cents a day for closing a batch. NMI, PayTrace, Cybersource and Akurateco publish nothing at all, and NMI's own FAQ explains why: the price is a buy rate its resellers mark up. Here is the arithmetic on 400 transactions a month.
9 min readSeptember 22, 2026
The same foreign client, the same $10,000, and a bill that runs from a few dollars to over five hundred depending on which rails it travels and who does the currency conversion. PayPal, Stripe, Airwallex, Payoneer and Revolut Business, from their own fee pages, plus what a plain bank wire costs.
8 min readSeptember 21, 2026
Ottawa's deal with Visa and Mastercard took small-business interchange to about 0.95% in October 2024. Stripe held its standard price and said why; Square cut its rates. Visa is now widening the program and cutting again. What the networks charge, what each processor did, and the Code that lets you leave.
15 min readSeptember 21, 2026
Stripe, Square, PayPal, Shopify and the rest all say the fee from the original sale is not returned when you refund it. Visa's and Mastercard's own rate tables show the issuer returns interchange on a credit-card refund, and nothing on debit. What each processor keeps, and when a void saves the whole fee.
11 min readSeptember 20, 2026
Instant Checkout in ChatGPT launched in September 2025, charged 4% from January and was withdrawn in March. Visa's CEO now says consumers shop with AI and pay on the seller's site. What each protocol does, what your processor has signed up to, what it costs, and why the merchant is still the merchant of record.
10 min readSeptember 20, 2026
Visa's own rate table carries a Small Merchant programme: lower interchange on consumer credit cards for any business under $280,000 a year in Visa credit sales. Whether a cent of it reaches you depends entirely on how your processor prices. We put a $50 sale through the table and through eight reviewed processors.
10 min readSeptember 19, 2026
A processor that is not a bank has always needed a bank behind it to reach Visa and Mastercard. A Georgia charter written in 2012 and unused for a decade now lets three of the largest processors hold that membership themselves. What it changes in your merchant agreement, and what it does not.
11 min readSeptember 19, 2026
Every invoicing platform charges about 2.9% to take a card. On a bank payment they range from 1% with no ceiling to a flat 59 cents to nothing at all. We put seven reviewed platforms on one basis — a $10,000 invoice and a $500 one — and read who is allowed to pass the card fee to the customer.
9 min readSeptember 18, 2026
Two processors this site reviews signed federal consent orders in September 2026: Humboldt Merchant Services for $12 million and Nuvei for $4.85 million. We read both complaints and both orders — what the FTC alleged, what each company is now barred from doing, and what high-risk merchants should expect to be asked.
14 min readSeptember 18, 2026
Apple lists 29 platforms that turn an iPhone into a card terminal in the US, and most of the processors this site reviews are on it. We read each one's pricing page to find what a tap on the phone costs, where it matches a reader and where it does not, and which big names are missing.
10 min readSeptember 17, 2026
Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, Polar, Dodo Payments, Gumroad, FastSpring and Xsolla sell your software as the legal seller and hand you the net. We put their published fees on one basis — a $29 subscription and a $99 one-off — against Stripe with and without its own merchant-of-record product.
12 min readSeptember 17, 2026
Square, Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, Clover, SumUp and QuickBooks all charge 3.4% to 3.5% to key a card in, against 2.3% to 2.7% to tap it. We put nine processors' rates on one basis, then went to Visa's April 2026 interchange table to see how much of the premium is real cost, and for which cards it is nothing at all.
10 min readSeptember 16, 2026
Since 17 April 2026 a business can run up to $3 million a year of American Express through its ordinary processor, not $1 million. Whether it costs the same as Visa depends on the processor: Square and Stripe charge one rate, Shopify and Squarespace add up to 0.7 points, and interchange-plus providers print the table.
13 min readSeptember 16, 2026
A lost dispute costs you the sale. The fee on top is the processor's, and the rules for it are all different: Square charges nothing, Stripe now charges twice, PayPal has three tiers, and QuickBooks keeps its $25 even when you win. We read nine fee schedules so the comparison is on one basis.
11 min readSeptember 15, 2026
From 1 October 2026 eftpos, Mastercard and Visa will prohibit surcharging in Australia, and Amex, UnionPay and PayPal are following. The same day, the interchange cap on consumer credit falls from 0.8% to 0.3%. We read the RBA's conclusions and what Square, Tyro, Zeller and Stripe have told their merchants.
12 min readSeptember 15, 2026
Global Payments and Shift4 clients are being billed new annual fees this autumn. We read five processors' own merchant agreements for what notice they owe you when fees go up, and whether you can walk away without an early-termination charge when they do. One gives US merchants that right. Four do not.
13 min readSeptember 14, 2026
Square, Toast, Clover, GoDaddy, Stripe and PayPal will move today's card sales to your bank in minutes for 1.5 to 1.95 percent of the amount. Standard funding at most of them is the next business day. What each charges, what the fee works out to as a rate for one or two days' money, and where the same speed is free.
10 min readSeptember 14, 2026
A retainer paid by card must reach the trust account in full, the fee must come out of the firm's own money, and no chargeback may touch another client's funds. Most general-purpose processors cannot promise any of that. What the ABA and state bars say, and what the processors that comply charge, as of September 2026.
12 min readSeptember 13, 2026
Capital One finished moving its debit cards from Mastercard to the Discover network this year. The federal interchange cap does not reach a three-party network, so a card that cost a merchant about 24 cents on a $50 sale now costs about 71. Who pays, who does not, and what the other big banks are doing about it.
11 min readSeptember 13, 2026
Square, PayPal, Stripe, Shopify and Toast all lend against your card sales on the same terms: one fixed fee, no interest, repaid as a slice of every day's takings. The fee is fixed. The time is not, and that is where the cost hides. Worked through with the providers' own examples, as of September 2026.
11 min readSeptember 12, 2026
Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna and Sezzle do not publish what they charge a merchant. Stripe, Square, PayPal and Shopify do, and as of September 2026 the answer clusters around 6% plus 30 cents. Here is what that buys, what the rate leaves out, and what the regulators are about to change.
12 min readSeptember 12, 2026
When a card issued outside the United States is used at a US business, Visa and Mastercard each add roughly 1.45% in cross-border assessments on top of everything else. Here is where that number comes from, how flat-rate processors pass it on, and what actually reduces it.
10 min readSeptember 11, 2026
Every vertical software company is told to monetise payments. There are three ways to do it, and they differ in who holds the merchant agreement, who eats the losses, and how much of the margin you keep. The published prices, side by side.
12 min readSeptember 11, 2026
In April 2026 Visa and Mastercard both stopped billing tokenization and card-updating services on use, and started charging for them as a rate on every card-not-present authorisation. Visa has already published the 2027 increase.
9 min readSeptember 10, 2026
Mastercard's specialty merchant fees began billing on 14 June 2026: $1,000 a year, $0.02 a transaction and 10 basis points on volume. Visa has charged the same shape of fee since 2023. What it adds up to, and which transactions are caught.
8 min readSeptember 10, 2026
Three Visa changes land between April and October 2026: the Digital Authentication Framework is being retired, passkeys are replacing it, and a token service switches on automatically at the end of October. Only one of them has a deadline you can miss, and it is not the one being written about.
10 min readSeptember 9, 2026
Visa's own rate schedule gives charities 1.35% + $0.05 on consumer credit, card-present or online, on every card tier including premium rewards. Two things stand between a nonprofit and that number: a merchant category code, and a pricing model that passes it through.
11 min readSeptember 9, 2026
An equipment lease is a separate contract with a separate company, written as a finance lease so that it cannot be cancelled. Cancelling your merchant account does nothing to it. Here is the law behind that, the arithmetic, and what a New York court found when it finally read one of these programmes end to end.
9 min readSeptember 8, 2026
Three ways to accept a card, three different answers to the question of whose name is on the merchant agreement and whose name appears on your customer's statement. The card network rules are explicit about it, and the difference decides your tax exposure, your chargeback liability and how hard it is to leave.
9 min readSeptember 8, 2026
A funding delay, a risk hold and a reserve are three different things with three different cures. Here is what Visa requires an acquirer's contract to say about reserves — and what Stripe's, Square's and PayPal's agreements reserve the right to do instead.
10 min readSeptember 7, 2026
Federal regulators are now barred from using reputation risk against the banks they supervise, and credit unions followed in July. The rule constrains examiners, not the acquirer that underwrites you — which is where almost every merchant account decision is actually made.
9 min readSeptember 7, 2026
Stablecoin acceptance now has published prices and a federal statute behind it. Here is what the rate actually buys, what disappears along with the chargeback, and the short list of merchants for whom the maths works today.
8 min readSeptember 7, 2026
Congress restored the $20,000 and 200-transaction threshold, and the coverage told small sellers they would stop getting a 1099-K. If you take cards through a merchant account, no threshold ever applied to you — and the December 2026 form has two new boxes nobody has mentioned.
7 min readSeptember 6, 2026
Pay by bank is sold as a way around interchange. It is three different products with three different price tags, and the Federal Reserve's own research warns against the savings claims. Here is what the rails cost, where the dispute rules land, and the shape of business it genuinely suits.
8 min readSeptember 5, 2026
A North Dakota court vacated Regulation II in August 2025 and then paused its own ruling. The Eighth Circuit heard argument in May 2026 and has not decided. Here is what the cap is actually worth to your business, and whether your pricing model would pass a change through at all.
9 min readSeptember 5, 2026
A MATCH listing follows you for five years, names you personally as well as your company, and nobody is required to tell you it happened. Here is what the rules actually say about how a listing is created, who can remove one, and what to do while you are on it.
11 min readSeptember 4, 2026
The Interchange Fee Prohibition Act was supposed to take effect on 1 July 2026. It is now permanently enjoined against most card issuers, preempted by two federal regulators, and delayed by statute to July 2027. Here is what an Illinois merchant should actually plan for.
9 min readSeptember 4, 2026
The FTC's click-to-cancel rule was vacated before it ever took effect. That changed less than most subscription businesses think, because Visa, Mastercard and California already require most of the same things — and have for years.
10 min readSeptember 3, 2026
Nacha's fraud-monitoring rule reached the rest of the ACH network on 22 June 2026. There is no volume threshold any more, no software you can buy to satisfy it, and two new mandatory descriptors that most e-commerce merchants have not heard of.
10 min readSeptember 3, 2026
Visa's general Level 2 interchange category no longer appears on its published rate schedule. Working from Visa's own document dated 18 April 2026, here is what enhanced data is worth now, where the arithmetic breaks for small-business cards, and what to check on your statement.
9 min readSeptember 2, 2026
The shortest PCI questionnaire got shorter in January 2025, and harder at the same time. Two requirements moved out of SAQ A and became conditions you have to satisfy before you may use the form at all — including one about your whole website, not just your payment page.
8 min readSeptember 2, 2026
Your statement is three costs stacked on top of each other: interchange set by the card networks, assessments and network fees the networks charge your acquirer, and your processor's markup. Only the third is negotiable. Here is how to separate them, using published 2026 rates.
9 min readSeptember 2, 2026
On 1 April 2026 Visa cut the excessive-merchant VAMP threshold from 220 to 150 basis points. The ratio counts issuer fraud reports as well as chargebacks, and only card-not-present sales. Here is how it is built, and what a breach costs.
11 min readSeptember 2, 2026
A federal judge gave preliminary approval to the revised Visa and Mastercard interchange settlement in June 2026. Here is what is in it, what is not, when any of it takes effect, and which merchants would actually see the savings.
12 min readSeptember 2, 2026
Surcharging is legal in most of the United States, but the rules come from three places at once: Visa, Mastercard and your state. Here is what each one requires, where the blog guides are out of date, and how the processors we review handle it.
16 min readSeptember 2, 2026
Six processors for online stores, compared on published rates, chargeback fees and what happens when you scale — including the point at which the industry-standard 2.9% + $0.30 stops being a good deal.
9 min readAugust 25, 2026
Six processors for restaurants, bars and cafes — compared on the card-present rate that decides your annual cost, the monthly software fee, and the early-termination clause that catches out more operators than anything else on this page.
10 min readAugust 25, 2026
Six providers that will underwrite a high-risk business, ranked by volume and situation — plus the five mainstream processors that will close your account once they notice what you sell.
9 min readAugust 25, 2026
Six providers that will actually board a hemp or CBD business for credit card processing, ranked by what you sell and how much of it — plus the five well-known processors that will close your account, so you don’t waste an application.
9 min readAugust 25, 2026
Five processors that will board an FFL, a gun store or an online ammunition retailer — with the card-present rates that actually matter at a counter, and the five mainstream processors that prohibit the category outright.
8 min readAugust 25, 2026
Learn more about the payment processing and merchant account options for pawn shops like yours.
4 min readApril 8, 2026
Having the right payment terminal can make the difference between smooth service and frustrated customers.
4 min readOctober 2, 2025
Learn how current and future data privacy regulations may affect payment processors and other businesses.
5 min readOctober 2, 2025
Learn how to navigate recent technological advancements and future regulatory shifts and tech changes.
5 min readNovember 13, 2024
Learn more about high risk merchant accounts and which processor might be best for your business.
5 min readNovember 9, 2024
Learn more about the companies that offer high risk merchant accounts with instant approval.
4 min readOctober 25, 2024
Whether your auctions are online or in-person these top payment processors are here to help.
4 min readOctober 22, 2024
Learn more about the top payment processors for marketers. Find one that's perfect for your business.
4 min readOctober 17, 2024
Explore our comprehensive guide of the top payment processors for consulting businesses.
5 min readOctober 1, 2024
Check out our comprehensive guide of the top payment processing companies for furniture merchants.
5 min readSeptember 29, 2024
Learn more about these top-notch payment processors services designed with pharmacies in mind.
5 min readSeptember 24, 2024
Answer six questions and we’ll rank every processor we grade against your answers — and tell you which ones will decline you before you apply.