Credit Card Processing Fee Calculator
Compare flat-rate and interchange-plus credit card processing fees side by side, with the arithmetic shown, not hidden.
Interchange-plus is cheaper — $348.34/mo
Flat rate
$891.67/mo
3.57% effective rate
Interchange-plus
$543.33/mo
2.17% effective rate
Annual saving: $4,180.08
Break-even ticket: no crossover at these terms
These are estimates for comparing pricing structures, not financial advice, and they leave out monthly minimums, PCI, gateway and terminal fees. Check any quote against your own processing statement before acting on it.
The interchange rate this uses
For a card mix of mostly in person under the standard interchange rates, the interchange-plus column is built on a representative blended interchange of 1.14% of volume plus $0.16 per transaction, with the markup you enter added on top. The flat-rate column has no such figure — a flat rate is quoted all-in.
Card-present blend derived from the Visa U.S.A. Interchange Reimbursement Fees schedule, rates effective 18 April 2026, and the Mastercard 2026-2027 U.S. Region Interchange Programs and Rates, effective 17 April 2026 — both read from Internet Archive captures of the publishers' own document URLs, because usa.visa.com and mastercard.com return HTTP 403 to a direct request; retrieved 2026-08-04. Base programs only (Visa Product 1 and 2, Mastercard Merit I and Merit III Base): the cheaper volume-threshold tiers start at 19.2 million transactions and $1.08 billion of annual volume, which no small business reaches. Weighted 47% consumer debit, 45% consumer credit and 8% commercial by value, with the regulated-debit share (64.3% of value) measured by the Federal Reserve's 2023 Regulation II report to Congress. That comes to 1.1447% before rounding, plus $0.1605 per transaction. Its debit component, 0.3532% plus $0.1929 per transaction, works out at 0.770% of value at the Fed's own measured $46.26 average debit ticket, against the 0.73% the Fed measures across all US debit — close, but not a like-for-like check: the Fed's figure also contains supermarket and fuel programmes that pull it down and a share of card-not-present volume that pushes it up. Checked 2026-08-04.
Judgement, not measured data: the card mix behind this figure is not all measured. Commercial cards are weighted at 8% of value, cut from the 16% the card networks disclose, because fleet cards, corporate travel and accounts-payable virtual cards never reach a small merchant's till — that is the least evidenced weight here and is worth about ±0.03 percentage points on its own. The split of consumer credit across non-rewards, mainstream rewards, premium and super-premium cards (8-40-37-15 by value) is published by nobody, and the 60:40 Visa-to-Mastercard split is an assumption too, because Mastercard discloses no US volume level. Together those are worth roughly ±0.10 percentage points on the rate above.
These are representative blended averages, not a live feed. They are derived from the Visa and Mastercard US interchange schedules themselves — read from Internet Archive captures of the publishers' own document URLs, because both sites refuse a direct request — and the line above says which schedule, which programs, and how the blend was weighted. Networks update the schedules a few times a year, historically April and October. Both plans are costed from the same figure, so a small drift moves the two columns together rather than changing which one wins. Every figure, for every card mix and both fee programmes, is set out on its own page. If you have a statement in front of you, your own interchange line is the better number — reading a processing statement shows where to find it.
How credit card processing fees are calculated
Almost every plan charges two things on each sale: a percentage of the amount, and a flat fee per transaction. What differs between plans is how those two parts are set, and that is the whole of what the calculator above compares.
A flat-rate plan quotes one percentage and one per-transaction fee for every card, and the processor absorbs the difference between that and what each sale actually costs it. An interchange-plus plan passes the interchange the card networks set straight through — it varies by card type and by how the card was presented — and adds a stated markup on top. Neither structure is universally cheaper; which one wins depends on your own numbers.
What your effective rate is
The effective rate under each column is the whole month's fees divided by the volume that produced them — the percentage and the per-transaction charges together, as one number. It is the figure worth comparing between two quotes, because a low headline percentage attached to a high per-transaction fee can still cost more overall. Which way that lands depends on your average sale: average ticket size decides which structure is cheaper, and monthly volume only decides by how much.
What this calculator does not include
Monthly minimums, PCI compliance fees, gateway and terminal charges, chargeback fees and early-termination clauses are all real costs on a processing bill, and none of them are modelled here. They are also where a cheap-looking rate is often recovered, so a quote is worth checking line by line against a real statement rather than on its headline rate alone.
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