Payment Processing · Buyer guide
In Switzerland, payment apps are now used at the till more often than credit cards. The Swiss National Bank's 2025 payment survey, carried out in autumn 2025, found that payment apps made up 17% of people's in-store transactions against 13% for credit cards, 37% for debit cards and 30% for cash; for online and other remote payments, including bills, apps were the largest single method at 32%. The bank says the app in question is mostly TWINT, which reported 901 million transactions in 2025 and more than 6 million active users.
So a Swiss business usually needs a price for three things: debit cards, credit cards and TWINT. Here is what each provider publishes, read from its Swiss pages on 22 October 2026, what TWINT charges, the interchange rules behind the card prices, and what the March vote on cash did and did not change. Prices exclude VAT unless stated.
Switzerland is not in the EU, so the EU's interchange caps do not apply. Instead the Competition Commission (WEKO) has reached settlements with the card schemes. On domestic credit cards the average interchange fee has been 0.44% since August 2017, down from 0.7% in 2015, and WEKO's July 2025 decision still describes 0.44% as the current rate. On debit cards it went further:
Interchange is what the customer's bank receives, not what you pay. Scheme fees and the provider's own margin come on top, and most small-business providers fold all of it into one flat rate per card type. That is why a reader on the counter typically costs 1% to 1.5% on a debit card whose interchange is around 0.12% to 0.15%.
We found no Swiss pages for Zettle by PayPal, Viva.com or Teya, so we have left them out. That is an absence on their own sites rather than a confirmed exclusion.
To put the published rates on one basis, take a shop that takes CHF 20,000 a month on Swiss debit cards in 400 sales of CHF 50. SumUp costs about CHF 300 at its standard rate, or about CHF 227 on the CHF 29 plan. Payrexx comes to about CHF 250 in card fees, or roughly CHF 269 with its one-year Standard plan and a free terminal. PostFinance's bundle is about CHF 250 with one terminal, Worldline about CHF 318 and myPOS about CHF 340. If many customers pay by credit card the order changes: SumUp's standard 2.50% on credit cards, matched by myPOS, is the highest rate here, while Worldline charges the same 1.29% on every Swiss card.
Customers pay with TWINT by scanning a QR code or tapping a terminal. A merchant can take it in two ways. The simplest is a QR sticker on the counter, ordered from TWINT. TWINT's own fees page, as archived in August 2025, priced the basic sticker at 1.3% of the payment with no minimum, no fixed fee and no monthly fee; its FAQ, archived in October 2025, priced a sticker carrying payment details at 1.3% + CHF 0.30. TWINT's site blocked our requests in October 2026, so we could not confirm that those prices are unchanged.
For TWINT at a card terminal or in an online checkout, TWINT says the payment provider sets the fee in most cases. The published prices:
On a CHF 50 sale, 1.3% is CHF 0.65, against CHF 0.75 for a debit card at SumUp's standard rate or about CHF 0.50 on its plan. TWINT costs no more than a credit card at any provider listed here, but it is not always cheaper than debit: PostFinance charges 1.2% on debit against 1.3% on TWINT, and at Payrexx the two cost the same on a CHF 50 sale. Fixed fees matter on small payments: on a CHF 5 online payment, Stripe's CHF 0.30 fixed fee alone is 6%.
Stripe charges 2.9% + CHF 0.30 on Swiss cards and 3.25% + CHF 0.30 on international cards, with no monthly fee. Payrexx charges 2.50% + CHF 0.30 on Visa and Mastercard on its free plan, 1.65% + CHF 0.18 on its Standard plan (CHF 15 to CHF 19 a month) and 1.35% + CHF 0.18 on Premium (CHF 39 to CHF 49), with 3.40% + CHF 0.18 on business and foreign cards. PayPal (A-) lists 3.4% + CHF 0.55 on domestic PayPal payments, on a Swiss fee page last updated in March 2022. Mollie (B+) publishes only its global price list, 1.80% + €0.25 on EEA consumer cards and 3.25% + €0.25 on non-EEA cards, and does not say how Swiss cards are classed.
At these rates a shop selling CHF 10,000 a month online in 100 orders pays about CHF 320 at Stripe on Swiss cards, about CHF 280 on Payrexx's free plan, and about CHF 202 on its Standard plan once the monthly fee is included.
Since 1 August 2015, when domestic credit card interchange was cut to 0.7%, the card schemes' rules have barred surcharges on Visa and Mastercard credit cards; Switzerland's retail association reported at the time that Diners and American Express were doing the same. Visa's 2025 debit settlement likewise lets Visa forbid surcharges on its debit cards but not discounts. The rule sits in the schemes' acceptance terms rather than in a Swiss law, but for a business taking cards the effect is the same: you cannot add a fee for paying by Visa or Mastercard. You can offer a discount for another payment method.
That is the same outcome as in the EU, where surcharges on consumer cards are banned by law. See our guides to card fees in Germany, France and Italy for how the neighbouring markets compare.
On 8 March 2026 Swiss voters rejected the 'cash is freedom' initiative, with 54.42% voting no, and accepted the counter-proposal with 73.42% in favour. The counter-proposal writes into the constitution that the Swiss currency is the franc and that the Swiss National Bank ensures the supply of cash. It does not oblige shops to take cash.
The underlying rule is unchanged. According to the Federal Department of Finance, francs must in principle be accepted to settle a debt, but the rule can be set aside by agreement as long as it is communicated clearly, for example with a sign at a restaurant entrance. Debts owed to the state, such as taxes and fines, are the exception. So a Swiss business may still go card-only, though the SNB survey suggests that would turn away a large share of customers: cash was still 30% of in-store transactions in 2025, and only 2% of people said they wanted it abolished.
