Understand Stripe Processing Fees: Guide & fee calculator

Stripe is a prominent player in the payment processing field, facilitating 500+ million API requests daily. While not as widely recognized as PayPal, Stripe has become a go-to choice for many e-commerce businesses.

While Stripe's fee structures are competitive and transparent, there are lots of variables and these can be hard to get your head around. Understanding Stripe's processing fees is essential for digital entrepreneurs, event ticket sellers, and e-commerce businesses who want to maximize their profits.

Together we'll cover how Stripe's processing fees work, addressing fees for different payment methods, locations, and features. We'll also share a Stripe fee calculator to help you crunch the numbers quickly and accurately!

Let's get some clarity on Stripe processing fees and and give you the tools you need to cut through confusion.

Overview of Stripe

Founded in 2010, Stripe has quickly gained prominence as a leading payment service provider (PSP). Its platform enables businesses to accept online payments, offering various payment options, including credit cards, digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay, bank transfers, and buy now, pay later options like Klarna.

Stripe's flat-rate fee pricing model is generally more straightforward compared to the more complex interchange-plus pricing structure, which can fluctuate based on the type of card used.

Benefits of using Stripe

Let’s take a look at just a few of the benefits of using Stripe as a payment processor:

1. Quick setup: Stripe enables businesses to set up their accounts quickly and easily, avoiding the lengthy approval processes associated with traditional merchant account providers.
2. Immediate payouts: Stripe ensures your account is funded quickly after every sale. The timing of your payouts will depend on your specific account settings, allowing for efficient cash flow management.
3. Multi-currency support: Accept payments in over 135 currencies, making your products globally accessible and reaching a wider audience.
4. Accept various payment methods: Debit/credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Klarna. This gives your customers multiple ways to pay.
5. Fee handling flexibility: You can pass service and credit card fees onto ticket buyers, allowing you to keep the full value of ticket sales or donations.
6. Robust security features: Stripe prioritizes security with features such as PCI compliance, encryption, and advanced fraud detection tools. This protects sensitive customer information and their reputation fosters trust in your customers.

How do Stripe processing fees work?

Understanding the different fees associated with Stripe is vital for any online seller. Typically your business will be charged a consistent rate for each transaction, irrespective of the transaction amount, the type of card used, or the issuing network.

The rate may differ depending on your country however, as Stripe operates in over 30 countries worldwide.

Stripe deducts fees from your payouts, decreasing the total amount you receive based on the fees incurred.

Let's take a look at the various factors that inform Stripe's fees:

Stripe standard payment fees (US)

• Online transactions: When sellers accept payments online (using credit/debit cards or digital wallets), Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.
• In-person payments: The fee is slightly lower for transactions processed through Stripe Terminal (for in-person sales), at 2.7% + $0.05 per transaction.
• Bank transactions:
  • ACH credit payments: $1 per transaction.
  • ACH direct debit payments: 0.8% per transaction (capped at $5).
  • Wire transfers: $8 for ACH credit payments and $15 for wire transfers.

Stripe international payment fees

Stripe makes it simple to handle international transactions; however, this does incur additional fees:

• International cards: An additional 1.5% is added for international card transactions.
• Currency conversion: If a currency conversion is required, an extra 1% fee applies.

Stripe supports international payment methods with country-specific fee structures, including SEPA Direct Debits and local options like iDEAL, Multibanco, and Giropay.

Refund and disputed transaction fees

If a refund is necessary, the original processing fees are not returned, which sellers must consider.

Additionally:

• Disputed transactions incur a fee of $15 for both ACH direct debit and card disputes.

Additional Stripe plans and fees

Stripe offers various tools and services that come with their fees:

Stripe billing
Stripe Billing is a powerful tool designed to help businesses manage recurring payments and subscriptions effectively. It allows for easy set up and automation of their billing processes, making it ideal for companies offering subscription services, membership fees, or recurring invoices.

Charges range from 0.5% to 0.8%, depending on location.

Stripe Connect
Stripe Connect enables platforms like marketplaces and on-demand services to manage payments between multiple parties.

With Stripe Connect, businesses can streamline user onboarding, manage payouts efficiently, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements all within a single framework. Its flexibility allows for seamless multi-party payments, enabling businesses to split transactions.

The fee is 0.25% per transaction.

Stripe Radar
Stripe Radar is a fraud prevention tool designed to help businesses protect their transactions from fraudulent activity. By using machine learning and analyzing transaction data in real time, it can identify and block suspicious transactions before they complete.

It continuously adapts to new data patterns, allowing businesses to customize their fraud protection strategies to fit their specific needs.

Radar: Costs $0.05 for every transaction screened for fraud protection. This fee is waived for standard account holders.
Radar for fraud teams: Costs $0.07 for every transaction screened, or $0.02 for accounts with standard pricing.

Stripe Invoicing
Designed to streamline the billing process, Stripe Invoicing offers a user-friendly interface that enables businesses to generate customized invoices.

The Plus option provides access to additional features, such as sending quotes to customers, seamless automatic payment collection, and invoice auto-reconciliation.

Starter: 0.4% per invoice paid
Plus: 0.5% per invoice paid

Stripe Sigma
Stripe Sigma is a powerful analytics tool that helps businesses understand their payment data. It allows users to create custom reports using SQL or natural language prompts and analyze various aspects of their transactions, giving insights into sales, refunds, customer behavior, and more.

The cost for this service is determined by the number of charges, authorizations, and application fees your business processes each month.

Stripe processing fees at a glance

Standard transaction fees internationally

Stripe transaction fees for businesses within the US

Advanced Stripe features and pricing models

In addition to its standard pricing, Stripe offers flexibility for businesses with a higher turnover:

• Volume discounts: Businesses processing high transaction volumes may qualify for negotiated rates. This is a custom offering.
• Multi-product discounts: Businesses offering multiple products may qualify for negotiated rates.
• Nonprofit discounts: Nonprofit organizations can apply for discounted processing rates, potentially saving on fees.

Stripe fees for nonprofits

Stripe provides special pricing for eligible nonprofit organizations that help reduce transaction costs when processing donations.

Here are the key points to consider:

Discounted processing rates on donations

Eligible nonprofits can benefit from reduced donation processing fees, typically $2.2% + $0.30 for standard credit and debit card transactions. American Express transactions may incur a higher cost, usually around 3.5%.

• Eligibility criteria:
  • To qualify for nonprofit rates, organizations must be classified as 501(c)(3) in the United States.
  • To maintain access to these reduced rates, nonprofits must process at least 80% of their payments as donations through Stripe.
  • Organizations primarily involved in ticket sales, membership fees, or other non-donation-related activities may not qualify for the discounted rates.

Additional considerations for non-profits

• Refunds: If a nonprofit issues a refund, the original processing fees are typically not returned. Nonprofits should consider this when managing their donation processing budgets.
• Chargebacks: Like any Stripe user, nonprofits may incur disputed transaction fees. This typically sets a fee of $15 for chargebacks.

💡 Learn more about how Checkout Page can help you accept donations with Stripe

Stripe processing fees calculator

📲 Utilizing a fees calculator can be incredibly helpful for businesses to understand their potential costs better. Sellers can estimate their fees based on location, anticipated sales volume, and transaction types.

We recommend this Stripe processing fees calculator, which includes options for the US, UK, EU, and Australia and allows you to add many advanced options to your calculation.

The calculator features advanced options such as tax automation, instant payouts, Connect, and more:

Tips for minimizing fees

Here are some actionable tips for online sellers to reduce payment processing costs:

1. Opt for lower-cost payment methods: Encourage customers to use debit cards or lower-fee digital wallets.
2. Fraud prevention: Implement security measures such as address verification to reduce fraudulent transactions and related costs.
3. Regular review: Periodically assess and negotiate your fees with Stripe as your transaction volume increases.

Benefits of using Stripe with Checkout Page

Checkout Page is an easy-to-use, no-code solution that lets you quickly design and customize one-page checkouts. You can embed these checkouts directly onto your website or host them as standalone pages—all within minutes.

Connecting your Stripe account to Checkout Page provides you and your customers with the many benefits of Stripe and many more that you don’t get with Stripe alone. Here are just some of those benefits:

• Sell digital downloads: Sell digital downloads with automatic file delivery.
• Craft customizable checkout forms: Add text fields, drop-downs, text areas, checkboxes & more.
• Sell event tickets: Take advantage of comprehensive ticketing features and enable the sale of multiple ticket types.
• Product variants & upsells: Add one-click upsells, order bumps, and product variants.
• Offer ‘Pay what you want’: Let your customers decide how much to pay for a product.
• Create lead capture forms: Create registration forms, surveys, lead magnets & more.
• Responsive website embed: Embed checkouts on your site with our user-friendly copy-paste setup.

By utilizing Stripe with Checkout Page, you can tailor the payment process and focus on what matters most—boosting conversion rates and delivering an exceptional customer experience.

Checkout Page plans are subscription-based and involve a budget-friendly monthly fee, with zero processing fees or any other hidden fees to worry about. We also offer discounts for non-profits and charities.

Why not find out how simple we’ve made it to create high-converting, friction-free checkout pages—with many benefits you don’t get with Stripe alone?

Try out our 7-day free trial—no card needed!