📊 Should I switch to interchange plus vs. flat rate pricing?

Stripe is excellent for startups, SaaS companies, and mid-size businesses because there are no monthly fees, setup costs, or confusing interchange tables. You've probably seen Stripe's headline rate – 2.9% plus 30 cents – and thought it’s pretty straightforward. But depending on how you use it, those fees can climb much higher than you'd expect.

The base fee for online payments is 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction. Your average order value is critical here. As Amad notes, the lower your average order size, the more those fixed 30-cent per-transaction fees eat into your overall margins. Enter your baseline sales numbers below.

Stripe is built like a toolkit. You start with the basics, but almost every advanced product or feature comes with extra fees. International payments typically add an extra 1.5% on top of standard processing fees. This is why Stripe feels affordable at first, then more expensive as you scale.

If you enable add-ons, your effective rate increases. As Amad explains, Stripe Billing for recurring subscriptions typically costs 0.7% of your billing volume. Automated tax calculations cost 50 cents per transaction, and Radar for Fraud Teams adds 2 cents per screened transaction.

But once you hit high volume, those per-transaction fees can hurt, especially compared to interchange-plus processors. At that point, Amad highly recommends comparing Stripe to traditional merchant services or interchange-plus providers who can offer you much lower rates.

Traditional processors charge a lower percentage and a smaller fixed fee per transaction, plus a flat monthly account fee. Don't forget to include the monthly cost of any third-party software you'll need to buy to replace Stripe's built-in subscriptions, fraud, and tax tools.