Payment Processing · Buyer guide
Danish shoppers have almost stopped using cash. Danmarks Nationalbank reported in June 2026 that cash made up 9% of in-store payments in 2025, down from 11% in 2023 and 23% in 2017, and that more than 90% of all payments in Denmark are now digital. What is unusual is the domestic card. Dankort, run by Nets, is the only card in the country whose full price to merchants is set by Danish regulation, and it is cheap. Everything else, from Visa and Mastercard to MobilePay, is priced by the provider.
Here is what each option costs, read from the providers' and regulators' own Danish pages on 24 October 2026, and the rules on surcharges and cash. Nets says its Dankort prices carry no VAT; hardware prices below exclude VAT.
For now, only Nets offers a Dankort acquiring agreement; the competition authority's January 2026 decision records that Nets is in talks with other acquirers interested in offering it. Nets is part of Nexi (our grade: B), and in Denmark it publishes no prices for Visa or Mastercard acquiring or for terminals; both are quote-only. Dankort's own price is public, because an executive order (BEK 1518 of 3 December 2025, in force since 1 January 2026) sets how it is charged for chip payments in physical shops.
A shop chooses between two models and may switch each quarter. Dankort FAST is a monthly fee per shop, set by how many Dankort payments the shop took over the past four quarters and whether its average sale is under or over 210 kr. Dankort PROCENT is a percentage of each payment. From the price list valid from 1 April 2026:
New merchants start in the first price group. Prices went up this year on both models, by about 10%: the smallest group paid 0.50% or 121 kr a month under the April 2024 list, when the average-sale threshold was 175 kr. That follows a decision by the Danish Competition and Consumer Authority (KFST) in January 2026 to let Nets collect up to DKK 374.5 million from shops for in-store Dankort in each of 2026 and 2027, 18.8% more than in 2024 and 2025. A law in force since 15 September 2026 lets the minister set rules on price models for certain payment cards that allow their operator a regulated profit, and to set rules on how transparent acquirers' fees and terms must be. We found no such transparency rules when we checked.
Online and in other channels, Dankort costs 0.36% of each payment with a minimum of 50 kr a month and no setup or annual fee. Unattended machines pay 1,250 kr to set up, 1,000 kr a year and 0.50 kr a payment. Nets says Dankort payments typically reach the merchant the day after the sale, against one to two days for Visa and Mastercard.
To see what the two models mean, take a shop with 200 sales a month of 250 kr, all on Dankort: 2,400 payments a year in the second price group. Dankort FAST costs 286 kr a month, because the average sale is over 210 kr. Dankort PROCENT costs 0.495% of 50,000 kr, about 248 kr. At this volume the fixed fee only wins once Dankort takings pass about 57,800 kr a month; Nets' own guidance suggests FAST for shops with an average sale over 300 kr and more than 750,000 kr a year on Dankort.
Denmark applies the EU Interchange Fee Regulation, so on consumer cards the bank that issued the card can charge the merchant's provider no more than 0.2% on debit and 0.3% on credit. Visa's Danish domestic schedule, dated April 2025, uses exactly those figures. Company cards are not capped: the same schedule charges 1.30% in store and 1.65% online on Visa business cards, rising to 1.65% and 2.00% on Visa Infinite business cards. Scheme fees and the provider's own margin come on top, which is why a flat-rate reader costs several times the interchange inside it.
None of the flat-rate providers below lists Dankort on its Danish pricing page. Each prices Visa, Mastercard and the wallets built on them:
For the shop above, 50,000 kr a month on Danish consumer cards in 200 sales, SumUp costs about 445 kr, Stripe about 850 kr, Viva.com about 882 kr including its 37 kr account plan, myPOS about 915 kr and PayPal about 975 kr, before hardware. All of them cost more than Dankort's regulated rate on the same takings, but that rate applies only to payments made on Dankort, and it needs a Nets agreement and a terminal that supports Dankort, both priced by quote. A shop that values a simple reader and a single statement pays the flat rate on every card.
MobilePay, now part of Vipps MobilePay (our grade: B), had 4,742,862 Danish users at the start of 2026 and handled about 603 million payments in Denmark worth DKK 238.8 billion in 2025, according to its own figures. Unlike Swish in Sweden, it is bought directly from Vipps MobilePay rather than from your bank. Its Danish price list in October 2026:
MobilePay's help pages say payments captured on a Monday are paid out on the Wednesday, and payments captured on a Friday on the following Tuesday; merchants can choose daily, weekly or monthly payouts. The app got a new logo on 6 October and will be renamed Vipps in Denmark on 12 January 2027. Vipps MobilePay's announcement says the prices stay as they are through the rename, but the January online price rise is on its business price list regardless.
Payment providers can also take MobilePay for you, at their own price. Stripe charges 1.5% + 2.80 kr plus 35 kr a month, which it says MobilePay requires for Danish businesses. Viva.com adds 1.00 kr per MobilePay Online payment to its card fees, plus a licence fee of at most 35 kr a month.
Online card payments cost more than in-person ones. Stripe charges 1.5% + 1.80 kr on standard EEA cards, 2.8% + 1.80 kr on premium EEA cards, 2.5% + 1.80 kr on UK cards and 3.15% + 1.80 kr on other international cards, plus 2% where currency conversion is needed. Viva.com charges 2.19% + 0.50 kr on Danish consumer cards online, and SumUp 1.49% on online payments with no monthly fee. Clearhaus, a Danish online acquirer we have not reviewed, publishes 1.45% on local consumer cards with a 0.60 kr minimum, plus a 0.22 kr authorisation fee and 0.30 kr for 3-D Secure. Adyen (A-) publishes €0.11 + interchange++ + 0.60% for cards, and processes Dankort for €0.11 a payment on top of the shop's own Nets agreement. Online Dankort through Nets, at 0.36% with a 50 kr monthly minimum, is the cheapest published card price, but it covers only payments made on Dankort and still needs a payment gateway.
Section 121 of the Payments Act allows a merchant to charge a card fee but says it may not exceed the merchant's own costs, and bans fees outright on cards whose interchange is capped by the EU rules. The Danish Competition and Consumer Authority's guidance says the ban covers shops and online sales, credit and debit cards alike. A fee is allowed on company cards, but only the acquirer's per-transaction fee; on cards issued outside the EU; and on three-party cards such as American Express. Card-based wallets cannot carry a fee, while account-to-account payments may, up to the acquirer's cost.
There is a catch on company cards. In October 2025 the authority found that 14 banks had issued about 200,000 Dankort and Visa/Dankort cards to businesses that cannot be identified electronically as company cards, about 6% of all Dankort. A merchant cannot tell those cards apart, so it cannot surcharge them. The banks have until 31 December 2026 to replace them.
Under section 81 of the Payments Act, a business that accepts payment cards or other payment instruments must also accept cash from 06:00 to 22:00. The rule does not apply to distance selling, unattended self-service, payments from business customers, or festivals and similar events of up to 14 days held once a year in a fenced area with controlled entry, where customers are told in advance. Shops in areas the minister designates as high-risk for robbery may stop taking cash at 20:00 if they display a sign saying so, and municipal councils can exempt institutions working with children and young people. The Nationalbank's June 2026 analysis recorded outages at Nets in July 2025 and May 2026, and argued that offline card payments and other fallbacks matter more as payments go digital.
Sweden has no domestic card and its bank-run Swish costs a flat fee per payment; our guide to Swedish card and Swish fees has the numbers. Norway's BankAxept is the closest match to Dankort, cheap but not price-regulated, as our guide to Norwegian card and Vipps fees shows. In Denmark, the cheapest way to take a card in a shop is still Dankort, the cheapest wallet is MobilePay at 0.99%, and the flat-rate readers are the price of convenience. Compare any quote against Nets' published Dankort price list before you sign.
