If you sell online, payment fees can feel mysterious and hard to control. You see a mix of percentages, fixed charges, and FX markups on every order, yet you may still worry that cross-border payments are eroding your margins. This article breaks the problem into clear pieces so you can see what drives your costs and how to compare offers from different providers, such as PayPal and Stripe. In contrast, Antom offers an international payment gateway with multi-currency support and local wallets, making it a stronger fit when your main goal is scaling cross-border e-commerce.
Understanding E-Commerce Payment Fees
You first need to know where your money goes before you can decide whether a fee is fair.
Cross-Border Card Cost Structure
Every card transaction pays several parties. Interchange goes to the cardholder’s bank, scheme fees go to the card network, and your acquirer or processor adds a markup. At the same time, cross-border transactions often incur additional surcharges and FX spreads, making international card payments more expensive than domestic ones.
Digital Wallet Costs Versus Cards
With digital wallets, you often see a single wallet fee instead of separate interchange and scheme lines, even though the same actors sit behind the scenes. In some markets, these fees are lower and deliver better checkout conversion because customers recognize the wallet brand and pay with a few taps. However, you still need to confirm pricing, currencies, and settlement rules for each wallet you add.
Operational and Risk Costs
Not every cost shows up directly on your invoice. Fraud losses, chargebacks, manual reviews, and the integration and compliance work needed to meet card security and data protection rules can rival the processing fee itself, so you should treat them as part of your payment cost.
Key Drivers of Payment Fees
Even with one gateway, you will see different effective rates across transactions and markets.
Transaction and Card Factors
Different card types carry different underlying costs. Debit, standard credit, premium rewards, and commercial cards each sit on their own interchange tables, and fixed per-transaction charges hit small-ticket orders hardest, so your effective percentage is often highest on your smallest and riskiest card-not-present transactions.
Market and Regulatory Factors
Where your customer is based and where your business operates both influence what you pay. Some regions cap consumer interchange, others allow higher levels or add local scheme fees on top, and local rules on surcharging, data storage, and authentication all shape what your provider must build and how it prices your payments.
Currency and FX Factors
Whenever you charge in one currency and settle in another, FX becomes a major part of your cost. Some gateways show a clearly labeled markup over a reference rate. In contrast, others bundle that spread into an all-in fee, so you should also check how refunds and chargebacks are handled when rates move between the original purchase and the later adjustment.
Comparing Payment Pricing Models
Once you understand the building blocks of your fees, you can compare how providers bundle them into pricing models.
Interchange++ Pricing Model
In an Interchange++ model, each transaction consists of three components: the interchange, the scheme fee, and the provider markup. This transparency lets you see how much is wholesale cost and how much is margin and allows you to benefit more directly when your mix shifts toward cheaper cards or regulated markets, at the expense of more complex statements and less predictable effective rates.
Blended Pricing Model
A blended model charges a single combined rate, usually a fixed percentage plus a per-transaction fee, regardless of the underlying interchange for each payment. That simplicity makes budgeting and reconciliation easier when you are starting. Still, you lose visibility into underlying costs and may overpay for low-cost transactions priced the same as expensive ones.
Matching Models to Business Needs
Your ideal model depends on your size, data, and risk appetite. High-volume, stable businesses often get more value from Interchange++ with a negotiated markup. At the same time, smaller or fast-changing operations may prefer a blended model that is easier to manage, especially when the gateway already covers their priority markets.
Evaluating Global Gateway Costs
Headline pricing is only part of the story; coverage, performance, and risk tools also change your real cost per successful order.
Market and Method Coverage
A global gateway should let customers pay using the methods they trust in each market, from local card schemes to popular wallets and bank transfers. Better coverage means more shoppers can pay in their preferred way, boosting approval rates and reducing cart abandonment. So check which markets, local methods, and currencies each provider truly supports.
Performance and Routing Features
Approval rates and checkout speed are just as important as the nominal fee. Gateways that route transactions intelligently across different acquiring partners, retry soft declines, and tailor authentication flows to each region often deliver more completed orders for the same traffic, and if your provider offers an international payment gateway with local acquiring and smart routing, even a small lift in authorization rates can offset a slightly higher listed fee.
Security, Risk, and Compliance
Weak risk controls can quietly destroy the value of a low fee. You need tools that combine device fingerprinting, behavioral scoring, and flexible rules, plus built-in support for regional regulations and data rules, so you can block fraud, reduce disputes and manual reviews, and avoid regulatory problems without turning away good customers.
Checklist for Evaluating Payment Fees
A simple checklist helps you turn all of these ideas into a clear decision.
Mapping Fees to Business Metrics
Start by calculating your current effective payment cost. Look at total fees divided by successful transaction volume and at payment costs as a percentage of revenue. Then break those numbers down by country, payment method, and average order value, and compare them with your targets for gross margin per order and customer lifetime value.
Questions for Global Gateway Providers
When you talk with potential providers, ask which parts of your fee are non-negotiable, which are network or bank charges, and which parts are their own markup. Clarify how they price cross-border volumes, FX conversion, premium card types, and popular wallets or bank methods; whether they offer local acquiring; and which fraud and compliance tools are included in the base package.
Comparing Cards, Wallets, and Locals
Next, sketch the mix of cards, wallets, and local bank methods you expect in each key market. Estimate not only the listed fee for each technique but also the expected approval rate and impact on customer experience, because a single gateway that offers international payments, strong local wallets, and bank options can reduce your overall cost per successful order, even when headline fees look similar.
Conclusion
When you understand how card costs, FX, provider markups, and operational expenses fit together, you can look beyond headline percentages, measure what you pay per successful order in each market, and choose partners that support your growth instead of quietly eating into your margins.
