How to Read a Payment Provider's Published Pricing

A published rate is a starting point, not a price. The amount that actually leaves your account per transaction is assembled from several components, and providers differ in which of them they show up front.

Interchange-plus versus blended

Blended pricing quotes one rate for everything, which is simple but hides variation between card types and geographies. Interchange-plus separates the network's interchange fee, the scheme fee and the provider's margin. Interchange-plus is more transparent and usually cheaper at scale; blended is easier to forecast when volumes are small.

The components to reconstruct

For a realistic cost per transaction, add: the percentage rate, any fixed per-transaction fee, cross-border or international card surcharges, currency conversion spread, and method-specific pricing where local rails are priced differently from cards. Then add the periodic items: monthly platform or gateway fees, minimum monthly charges, chargeback fees, refund handling fees, and any charge for payouts or additional accounts.

Cross-border is where estimates break

A card issued abroad frequently costs materially more to accept than a domestic one, and the surcharge is often mentioned only in a footnote. If a meaningful share of your customers pay with foreign cards, model that mix explicitly rather than applying the domestic rate to everything.

Chargebacks and refunds

Check whether the original processing fee is returned when you refund a transaction — frequently it is not. Check the flat fee charged per chargeback, whether it is refunded if you win the dispute, and whether excessive dispute ratios trigger additional charges or reserves.

Build a per-market model

Take a representative month of your own transactions, split by market, card type and method, and apply each provider's published components. The ranking that comes out of this exercise regularly differs from the ranking implied by headline rates.

A note on transparency

Many providers publish pricing openly; others quote only on request, particularly for higher-risk categories or high volume. Neither is inherently a red flag, but a provider that will not put its fee structure in writing before contract should be treated cautiously. On iGaming Solutions Asia we record pricing only where the provider publishes it themselves, and mark it as not stated otherwise — we do not estimate fees on a provider's behalf.