Payment Processing · Buyer guide
A Belgian customer tapping a Bancontact card costs the shop's bank almost nothing in regulated fees: since 1 April 2024 the interchange on a domestic consumer debit card is capped at 0.1% of the sale and no more than €0.056, under a Royal Decree that halved the old 0.2% rate; the €0.056 ceiling was already in place. What the shop pays its provider is another matter. On the published Belgian price lists, a Bancontact card payment at the counter costs €0.075 to €0.24 on most of the plans that charge a flat fee per transaction, and 1.49% to 1.69% at those that charge a percentage on their no-subscription plans. On a €50 sale that is the difference between 7.5 cents and about 85 cents.
This guide sets out what each provider charges, read from its own Belgian pages on 19 October 2026, puts the figures on one basis, and covers what changed with Payconiq and Wero, the duty to offer an electronic payment option, and why a Belgian business cannot charge any customer extra for paying by card.
Bancontact is Belgium's domestic debit scheme. Its owner, Bancontact Company (Bancontact Payconiq Company until spring 2026), says it processed 1.9 billion card payments in Belgian shops in 2025 and has close to 18 million cards in circulation. The FPS Economy's Price Observatory, in a study published on 4 June 2026, cites a Worldpay estimate that Bancontact holds 84% of the Belgian card market, against 9% for Mastercard and 6% for Visa.
Two fees sit underneath every card payment, and Bancontact is low on both. The interchange cap applies to Bancontact, Visa and Mastercard debit alike; the Observatory reports that all three apply 0.1% capped at €0.05, slightly under the legal ceiling. Consumer credit cards stay at the EU cap of 0.3%. The second fee, the scheme fee, is not capped and not published. Working from Worldline's scheme-fee brochure, the Observatory estimates that a €50 Bancontact payment in a shop carries about 0.26 euro cents in scheme fees, against 2 to 5 cents on Visa or Mastercard. Its conclusion: Bancontact debit payments generally remain cheaper for a merchant than Visa or Mastercard debit, and credit cards are among the most expensive.
The Observatory put the total cost of electronic payments for the merchant profiles it studied at 0.2% to 0.9% of turnover. Where your bill lands in that range depends mostly on how your provider prices Bancontact.
Flat fee per payment, from each provider's Belgian page:
Percentage pricing:
Two widely used providers do not price Bancontact at the counter. Revolut Business (B) lists 0.8% + €0.02 on domestic and European consumer cards in person, but Bancontact does not appear on its Belgian pricing page. Stripe (A) charges 1.4% + €0.10 on EEA cards through Stripe Terminal, and for Belgium its documentation lists Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover, adding that it can support co-branded Bancontact over the co-branding rails. Where that works, the payment is priced as a card payment, not as Bancontact. Zettle, PayPal's card reader, has no Belgian site.
Take a bakery taking 1,500 Bancontact card payments of €20 a month, €30,000 in all. Counting transaction fees and any monthly plan, but not terminal purchase or rental:
Ticket size reorders the list. A flat fee is cheap on a large sale and expensive on a small one: Viva's €0.14 costs less than SumUp's 1.69% on anything above about €8.30, and more below it; for CCV's lowest tier the break-even is about €4.40. A newsagent selling €4 items would pay about 7 cents a payment at SumUp against 14 cents at Viva, and nothing at all at CCV for its first 1,000 such payments a month while the free-transaction offer lasts. Run the sums on your own average sale.
Payconiq no longer exists as a brand. Its merchants were moved automatically onto a new platform in December 2025, and on 16 March 2026 the Payconiq app became Bancontact Pay. The new shop QR stickers take payments from both the Bancontact Pay app and Wero, the European Payments Initiative's wallet, which Belgium's big banks have built into their apps. As the Price Observatory puts it, Payconiq is being replaced not by Wero alone but by Wero and Bancontact Pay; which one runs depends on the app the customer opens.
Taken directly from Bancontact, a QR sticker or the Bancontact Pro app costs €0.06 per payment plus €18 a year, both ex VAT, with no activation fee. The €18 is billed even in a year with no payments. Money arrives the same day or the next working day, depending on the banks involved. Bancontact Company said in November 2025 that prices for former Payconiq merchants were frozen until the end of 2026; it has not said what applies after that. On the bakery's 1,500 sales, if every customer paid by app, the monthly bill would be €91.50, counting a twelfth of the annual fee.
Online, Wero has taken payments at Belgian shops since 3 March 2026. Of the providers we checked, only Mollie and Pay. list a price for Belgian Wero payments (Viva and Stripe price the Dutch “iDEAL | Wero”): Mollie charges €0.39 on a domestic Belgian Wero payment, the same as Bancontact, and Pay. €0.19 on Professional or €0.17 on Business for payments under €50. The Dutch side of the same change, where Wero is replacing iDEAL, is covered in the site's guide to the iDEAL to Wero migration.
Online, most providers charge a flat fee for Bancontact and a percentage for cards:
For a webshop taking 500 Bancontact orders of €60 a month, that works out to €160 at Pay. Professional including its €35 plan, €175 at Stripe, €185 at Viva, €190 at Worldline, €195 at Mollie or PayPal, €249 at myPOS Pro including its plan, and €750 at SumUp. The same 500 orders on standard EEA cards at Stripe would cost €575. MultiSafepay (B-) serves Belgian merchants but publishes no prices and quotes them individually.
Since 1 July 2022, every business selling to consumers face to face in Belgium must offer at least one electronic means of payment, under article VI.7/4 of the Code of Economic Law. The FPS Economy says the duty covers businesses of every size and the liberal professions, and that a bank account number displayed at the till or a banking-app QR code is enough; meal vouchers, eco-vouchers and crypto do not count. A business may offer different electronic methods depending on the amount, as long as it tells customers clearly, but it may not refuse electronic payment for small amounts. Breaking the rule is a level-2 offence, a criminal fine of €26 to €10,000, or 4% of annual turnover if that is higher. In an inspection campaign it reported in August 2025, the FPS found only 83 shops without an electronic option; far more common was failing to show, at the entrance and at the till, which payment cards the shop accepts.
Since 31 March 2024, the same face-to-face businesses must also accept cash from consumers under article VI.7/5, except temporarily for duly justified security reasons, which must be displayed at the entrance and the till. A shop may refuse a banknote that is disproportionate to the amount due. A fine is possible only after the breach has been recorded twice and a warning ignored.
Surcharging is banned outright. Article VII.30 §3 of the Code, in force since 9 August 2018, forbids a business from charging a customer for using any payment instrument. That goes further than the EU minimum, which bans surcharges only on capped consumer cards and on SEPA transfers and direct debits: the Price Observatory confirms the Belgian ban also covers business cards and American Express, in shops and online. A discount for a particular payment method is allowed if it is justified and clearly shown. For how this compares with the United States, where surcharging is allowed with conditions, see the site's guide to card surcharge rules, and for Belgium's southern neighbour, the guide to French card payment fees.
Once you are trading, compare each month's statement with the quote. The site's guide to reading a merchant processing statement is written for US statements, but the checks are the same: the rate per card type, the fixed fee per payment, and everything charged by the month.
