More than a headline rate: the fees payment providers charge on top

A provider’s headline rate tells you what it charges on a clean domestic card sale that is never refunded or disputed and is paid out in the currency it was bought in. Few of your orders look like that. This page walks through every other line on the bill, in the order the calculator counts them, with a published example of each. The numbers for every provider sit side by side in published provider fees, checked on 19 September 2026.

Why the headline rate is the wrong number to compare

Most game-focused merchants of record do not publish a complete price list. Xsolla, Appcharge, Neon and FastSpring publish no standard merchant of record rate. Stash’s last public figure is a June 2024 blog example. Coda publishes three headline tiers and no add-ons. Aghanim is the exception. Its Developer Terms contain the whole fee schedule, which is why it appears in several examples below.

Where a rate is published, “5%” is stacked in different ways:

• Xsolla’s payment service provider product is “5% + payment system fee per successful transaction”.
• Stash’s 2024 example took “a 5% fee on your net revenue”, after channel fees of 2.9% + $0.30, a 1.5% foreign transaction fee, currency conversion and taxes had already come off.
• Stripe Managed Payments is “3.5% per successful Managed Payments transaction in addition to Payments fees”, so 6.4% + 30¢ on a US card.

Neon, a merchant of record that sells on all-in pricing, writes on its blog that a 5% quote typically ends up at “8–20% or higher”. That is a vendor’s claim about its competitors. The worked example further down tests it against one published schedule.

The fixed fee per order, and why it dominates small purchases

Most providers charge a percentage plus a fixed amount on every order. On a $20 order, 50¢ is 2.5 points. On a $0.99 order it is half the price. The table shows what published rates cost at common game price points, before tax, disputes, refunds and payout conversion.

Our calculation from each provider’s published rate, 19 September 2026. Paddle says that for products under $10 you should “contact us for custom pricing”, so its list price may not be what you would pay at $0.99 or $4.99. PayPal publishes a separate micropayments rate of 4.99% plus a 9¢ fixed fee.

Part of the fixed cost is the card network’s, and no provider can remove it. Visa’s US schedule effective 18 April 2026 sets regulated debit interchange at 0.05% + $0.21, about 21% of a $0.99 sale before any provider adds its margin. If your catalog leans on $0.99 and $1.99 items, ask each provider for its small-ticket pricing in writing, and look at whether your web shop should sell bigger bundles than your in-game store.

Payment-method fees on top of the headline

Some providers include every payment method in the headline rate. Others add a fee per method, and a few do not say.

Method fees matter most where players pay with something other than a card. A web shop that adds Pix for Brazil or iDEAL for the Netherlands to win conversion also adds that method’s price to your cost line. The payment methods guide covers which methods players use in each market.

Cross-border card surcharges

A provider prices cards issued in its home region at one rate and foreign cards at a higher one. Which of your players count as foreign depends on the provider, not on you. For a US provider, your German players are cross-border.

• Stripe US adds “+ 1.5% for international cards”.
• Stripe UK charges 1.5% + 20p for standard UK cards, 2.5% + 20p for cards from the European Economic Area and 3.15% + 20p for other international cards.
• Aghanim adds 1.5% on “international cards (except the cards issued in the US)”.
• Lemon Squeezy adds “+1.5% for international (outside of the US) transactions”.
• Braintree adds 1% for a card issued outside the US; PayPal adds 1.50% on international commercial transactions.
• Paddle and FastSpring say international processing is included.

The surcharge follows the network’s pricing. EU law caps consumer interchange at 0.2% for debit and 0.3% for credit on cards issued and used in the European Economic Area. For cards from outside the area used online at an EEA merchant, Visa and Mastercard committed to caps of 1.15% for debit and 1.50% for credit, several times higher.

Currency conversion, often charged twice

Conversion can happen at two points. At checkout, a player in Poland pays in złoty and the provider converts to your balance currency. At payout, the provider converts that balance into the currency of your bank account. Some providers charge at one point, some at both, and the published charges run from 1% to 4%.

Two details change the real cost. The first is the rate the markup is added to. Appcharge says it “generally applies the mid-market rate”; a provider that adds its percentage to a worse rate charges more than the headline number shows. The second is reversals. Appcharge converts refunds and disputes back “at the current exchange rate”, so a currency move between sale and chargeback lands on you. Stripe’s Adaptive Pricing moves the conversion cost onto the player; your fee line looks cleaner, and the player sees a higher local price.

Payouts: fees, minimums, holds and reserves

The payout line has four parts: what the transfer costs, how much must build up before it is sent, how long the money waits, and how much is held back as a reserve.

Waiting has a cost the fee schedule does not show. Take a studio selling $1 million a year through a provider that pays monthly, up to 30 days after month end. A sale waits between 30 and 60 days, about 45 on average, so around $123,000 is in transit at any time ($1,000,000 × 45 ÷ 365). A 5% reserve built over six months adds up to $25,000 more; ask when each month’s reserve is released. At a 10% cost of capital, which is our assumption and should be replaced with yours, carrying $148,000 costs about $14,800 a year, or 1.5% of revenue. On Stripe’s T+2 settlement the money in transit is about $5,500. The calculator counts payout fees; add the cost of waiting from your own treasury numbers.

Money waiting for payout is money the provider owes you, so you carry its credit risk. Digital River, a merchant of record that at its peak “processed over $30 billion in online transactions”, said on 2 January 2025 it was “unable to tap into advanced funding of our revolving credit facility” and began winding down. Its Irish arm went into provisional liquidation and insolvency proceedings began for its German subsidiaries. Former clients reported delayed or missed payouts; those reports come from merchants and secondary sources, not court findings. Weekly payouts and small reserves reduce what you stand to lose if a provider fails.

Chargebacks: the fee, the lost sale, and whether either comes back

A chargeback costs you three things: the provider’s fee, the value of the sale if you lose, and any fee for fighting it. Every provider below that states a policy keeps at least part of its fee even when you win.

On a lost dispute through a payment service provider, the sale value is gone as well; you are the merchant. A merchant of record can pass it back too: Aghanim’s terms, for example, deduct chargebacks from the developer’s share. Most others do not publish who carries the lost sale, so ask. Stripe’s Smart Disputes service charges 30% of the disputed amount on each dispute it wins, and its prevention tools cost $15 per Visa resolution or Compelling Evidence 3.0 block and $29 per Mastercard resolution. Card network penalties for a high dispute rate come on top; chargebacks and fraud in game payments covers Visa’s and Mastercard’s thresholds and fines.

Refunds: the fees you don’t get back

When you refund a player, most providers return the sale amount to the player and keep their own fee.

Other published treatments:

• FastSpring’s legacy Classic docs describe the opposite. The FastSpring fee is credited back, and “The refund fee is 3.5% of the order total.” Those docs predate its current platform, so confirm which rule is in your contract.
• Aghanim charges $0.50 per refund on non-card methods and bank transfers.
• Lemon Squeezy deducts “the refunded amount (minus our platform fee)”, which reads as you being debited only the net you received.
• Stripe Managed Payments may keep the original sales tax on refunds “in certain jurisdictions”. Stripe “can issue refunds within 60 days of the original transaction in certain cases”, and if you don’t answer a support escalation within 48 hours it “might issue a refund without your approval.”

At a 1% refund rate, a studio with $1 million of sales in $20 orders refunds 500 orders a year. At 5% + 50¢ with fees kept, that costs $750 in fees on top of the refunded sales.

Fraud tools: included, metered or sold separately

Fraud screening is included in most merchant of record rates. With a payment service provider it is often a separate meter.

• Stripe includes Radar Lite on standard pricing. Radar’s fuller tiers cost “Starting at $0.05 per screened transaction”, or plans from $10 a month. 3D Secure is included on standard pricing and costs $0.03 per attempt on custom pricing.
• Braintree’s Fraud Protection Lite is $0.05 per inquiry. Its Chargeback Protection starts at 0.4%.
• PayPal sells Chargeback Protection at 0.40% per transaction and Effortless Chargeback Protection at 0.60%.
• Stash says “fraud prevention, support and compliance are included”. Stripe Managed Payments includes fraud prevention.

A per-order fee scales with order count, not revenue. At $0.05 a screen, fraud tooling is 0.25% of a $20 order and 2.5% of a $1.99 one.

Tax engines, registrations and filing

Under a merchant of record, sales tax and VAT are the provider’s job at no extra cost. It is the seller, so it registers, collects and files. Under a payment service provider you are the seller, and you pay for three things: a tax engine to calculate the right rate, registrations in each country and state where you owe tax, and the returns.

• Stripe Tax Basic costs “0.5% per transaction, where you’re registered to collect taxes” on the no-code setup, or $0.50 per transaction through the API.
• Stripe Tax Complete, which adds registrations and filings, starts at $90 a month on a one-year contract (£70 in the UK), and “Additional fees may apply for registrations and filings outside of the US”.
• TaxJar lists Starter at $39 a month and Professional at $99 a month, both for up to 200 orders a month.

The EU’s €10,000 threshold applies only to sellers established in one EU country, so a studio based outside the EU owes VAT in each player’s country from the first sale. The non-Union One Stop Shop lets it file one quarterly return for all of them. The tax guide sets out which countries and states require registration.

Stripe Managed Payments takes its fee from the tax-inclusive amount; Stripe says the 3.5% “is calculated based on the full transaction amount, including any indirect taxes”. On an item priced at €10 with 20% VAT, the player pays €12 and the fee is €0.42, which is 4.2% of your €10 price. At Hungary’s 27% VAT it is 4.4%.

Monthly fees, minimums and commitments

Paddle advertises “No migration fees, monthly fees, or hidden extras”. Stripe Managed Payments has “no setup fees or monthly minimums”, and FastSpring says it has “no minimum transaction volume”. The commitments that remain sit in add-ons and enterprise terms. Adyen has no monthly or setup fees but has “a minimum invoice depending on industry or business model”. Stripe Tax Complete is a one-year contract, and Radar’s plans are monthly. Coda offers custom pricing to companies processing at least $100,000 a month.

Contract terms that move money

Most providers keep their standard contract private. Aghanim’s published terms show what to look for.

The same terms run for 12 months and then renew each year, let either side terminate for convenience on 30 days’ written notice, cap Aghanim’s liability at “one month of Aghanim’s fee”, and treat statement discrepancies of “10% or less” as “customary in trade”. Terms elsewhere that change what you pay:

• Repricing. PayPal “may increase the percentage components of your Transaction Fees after giving you 30 days prior notice”. Braintree says fees “may vary based on business size and risk profile”.
• Dispute limits. Paddle sets an acceptable chargeback rate “Below 0.65% of transaction volume”. Stripe Managed Payments requires “a low historical dispute rate and no prior risk issues”.
• What you may sell. Paddle says it serves “software companies (including B2B SaaS, Consumer Software, and Games)”, but its prohibited list includes “Virtual currency or stored value, including but not limited to store credit, gift cards, vouchers”. A studio selling gems or coins through Paddle should get written confirmation first.
• Price-setting. Who sets the price also affects whether you book revenue gross or net; see merchant of record accounting.

Worked example: what “5% + 50¢” costs a studio with $20 orders

This uses Aghanim’s schedule because every line is published. A provider that publishes less could cost more or less; you can’t tell until you have its numbers. The business is the calculator’s default: $1 million a year, $20 average order, 25% of sales on non-US cards, 25% needing conversion, 1% of orders refunded, 0.35% disputed, 40% of disputes won.

The 5% headline becomes 8.7%, and the fixed fee alone is two-thirds of the gap. Outside the table, the 5% reserve and monthly payout hold back up to about $148,000 of your cash at any time. Change the order size and the answer moves: at a $5 average order, the fixed fee alone is 10% of revenue.

Ask for this in writing

Send this list to every provider on your shortlist and ask for an answer on each line, including “not charged”. A blank means you have to assume the worst case.

Put the answers into the calculator side by side, and check them against the published figures in provider fees. For the questions to ask beyond price, see choosing a D2C payments provider.