If you're processing credit card payments through Stripe, Square, or PayPal, you're almost certainly paying more than you need to. These processors use a pricing model called flat-rate or bundled pricing — and it's designed to be simple for them, not cheap for you.
Flat-rate pricing charges you the same percentage on every transaction regardless of the card type. Whether your customer pays with a basic debit card (which costs the processor almost nothing) or a premium rewards card (which costs significantly more), you pay the same 2.9% + $0.30. The processor pockets the difference on every low-cost transaction.
Interchange-plus pricing works differently. Instead of a flat rate, you pay the actual wholesale cost (called interchange) that Visa, Mastercard, or the card network charges — plus a small, fixed markup from your processor. This means you pay less on debit cards, less on in-person transactions, and less on most card types compared to flat-rate pricing.
For a business processing $50,000 per month, the savings from switching to interchange-plus typically range from $400 to $1,200 per month. Over a year, that's $5,000 to $15,000 back in your pocket — money that was quietly being taken by your flat-rate processor.
The reason most small businesses don't use interchange-plus is simple: the big processors don't offer it. Stripe, Square, and PayPal built their businesses on simplicity, and flat-rate pricing is simple to explain even if it's expensive to use. They don't want you comparing line items on a statement — they want you to see one number and not ask questions.
At ClickWerxs, every merchant account uses interchange-plus pricing by default. Your monthly statement shows the exact interchange cost for every transaction and our fixed markup alongside it. There are no hidden fees, no annual charges, and no junk fees buried in the fine print.
Ready to see how much you're overpaying? Send us a recent processing statement and we'll build a free, line-by-line comparison showing your current costs versus interchange-plus. Most merchants are surprised — and a little angry — at the difference.