Industry · Payment Processing
Banco de España published its card statistics for the second quarter of 2026 on 8 October. The average fee Spanish merchants paid to accept a domestic card was 0.38% of the sale, from 0.23% at food supermarkets to 0.51% at restaurants and 1.01% at hotels. That average is weighted by value, so large merchants on negotiated bank rates dominate it. A small business signing up online sees different numbers: the app-based card reader providers that publish a price charge between 0.8% (Revolut Business, on a €10-a-month plan) and 1.69% (Viva) in person on a Spanish consumer card, and some banks that publish a price are cheaper still.
This guide sets out what each provider charges, as read on 14 October 2026, what a typical sale costs at each, what Bizum costs now that it works in shops, and two rules every Spanish business has to follow: surcharging is banned for every payment method, and shops must accept cash.
Interchange is the part of every card fee that goes to the customer's bank. The EU's Interchange Fee Regulation caps it at 0.2% on consumer debit cards and 0.3% on consumer credit cards. Spain goes further. Article 11 of Ley 18/2014 adds a maximum of 7 cents per debit transaction, and lowers the caps to 0.1% on debit and 0.2% on credit for payments of €20 or less, where the customer's bank and the merchant's provider are both established in Spain. Business cards are outside the caps, and so, generally, is American Express, as a three-party scheme.
So on a €30 debit card payment, the customer's bank can take at most 6 cents. Most of what a small merchant pays above that is the provider's margin and the card schemes' own fees, which is why the gap between the cheapest and dearest price list is several times the interchange itself.
Three of Spain's largest banks publish a price for their card terminals. None of them is a provider we have reviewed, so treat these as a benchmark rather than a recommendation.
BBVA publishes only a promotion, so ask it for a quote. A bank's price is negotiable and usually comes with a business account; the providers below sell online, with no account at that bank.
Two providers price on interchange plus a margin. MONEI, a Málaga-based payment institution licensed by Banco de España, charges interchange and scheme fees, a 0.10% acquiring fee and 0.90% + €0.25 online, or 0.25% with no fixed fee in person through its MONEI Pay app, plus €0.15 a day and €0.20 per payout. Adyen charges interchange and scheme fees plus 0.60% and €0.11, with a minimum monthly invoice that varies by sector.
Paid in person with a Spanish consumer debit card, a €30 sale costs 7 cents at Sabadell (its minimum), 26 cents at Revolut, 36 cents on Mollie's Tap app, 43 cents at Square, 45 cents at SumUp, Teya (Simple) and PayPal POS, 49 cents at myPOS, 51 cents at Viva and 52 cents at Stripe. Of each, at most 6 cents is interchange. Revolut's figure is before its €10 monthly plan fee.
A monthly plan pays off quickly. SumUp's €25 Tarifa Plana costs less than its pay-as-you-go rate once a shop takes roughly €1,700 to €2,000 a month in person on standard Spanish cards; the page does not say whether the €25 includes IVA. On CaixaBank's flat tariff, a shop taking €2,000 a month pays €12, or 0.6%, and one taking €25,000 pays €120, or 0.48%.
Online, a €50 payment on a Spanish consumer card costs 70 cents at Revolut, 85 cents at Mollie and myPOS, 95 cents at Square and on a PayPal guest checkout, 98 cents at SumUp, €1.00 at Stripe, €1.34 at Viva, and €1.80 if the customer pays from a PayPal wallet.
Bizum is Spain's bank-run mobile payment service, built into the apps of the country's banks. By its own figures it had more than 30.6 million users in 2025, and online shoppers made 105.6 million Bizum payments, up 82%, worth €5.4 billion. In September 2026 Bizum said nearly 20 million people could pay with it in shops and that more than 1.6 million merchants, about three-quarters of bank card terminals, could accept it. A shop usually keeps its terminal and asks its bank to switch Bizum on.
Bizum publishes no merchant price; it sends businesses to their bank or a certified gateway. The published prices are not cheaper than a card online. Stripe charges 1.5% + €0.25 per Bizum payment, the same as a standard card, and MONEI charges €0.17 plus 1.29% + €0.25, so a €50 payment costs €1.00 and about €1.07 respectively. Mollie charges its acquirer's fee, which it does not publish, plus 0.10% + €0.10. Through a bank terminal it can be cheaper: CaixaBank includes Bizum in its flat tariff.
Bizum is not a card, so a customer cannot raise a card chargeback. It does run its own claims process for payments to businesses, covering fraud, double charges and wrong amounts, which customers can open within 120 days according to Stripe's documentation. Refunds follow your own returns policy.
On 30 September 2026 Bizum, Italy's Bancomat, the Wero operator EPI, SIBS, which runs Portugal's MB WAY, and the Nordic Vipps MobilePay announced a joint company, based in Madrid, to connect their services across about 130 million users in 13 countries. It starts with payments between people across borders; shop and online payments are planned for later phases, with no date. Our guide to iDEAL's move to Wero covers what Wero costs merchants elsewhere.
The EU bans surcharges on consumer cards whose interchange is capped. Spain bans them on everything. Article 35.3 of Real Decreto-ley 19/2018, which put the second Payment Services Directive into Spanish law, says a payee may not require the payer to pay any additional charge for using any payment instrument. That covers business cards, American Express and Bizum, as well as consumer cards, and article 34 does not let business customers agree otherwise. You may offer a discount for paying a particular way.
Since May 2022 Spain's consumer protection law has treated refusing a cash payment, within the legal limits, as an infringement. The limit is set by Ley 7/2012: a payment of €1,000 or more may not be made in cash where either party is acting as a business or professional, rising to €10,000 for a private customer who is tax-resident abroad. A shop can promote card or Bizum payments, but it cannot go card-only.
Spain's hotels and restaurants take many foreign cards, and the cheaper rates above are for European consumer cards. In person, a non-EEA card costs 1.5 points more at both Square and Stripe, for example. Some terminals also offer foreign customers the option to pay in their own currency, which earns the merchant a share of the conversion margin at some providers; our guide to dynamic currency conversion explains what that pays and what it costs your customers.
