Home / Free tools / What are your card fees really costing you?
Free tools · CalculatorPut in your monthly card volume and your average ticket. You get the monthly cost on the rates Square and Clover publish, and the effective rate each one works out to. No email needed — the answer is right there.
Or call and talk it through: (305) 215-6132Everything you run through cards in a month.
Total sales divided by number of sales.
Illustration only. Rates shown are the figures published by Square and Clover in 2026 and reproduced in this site’s own fee articles; your actual rate depends on your plan, your card mix, your industry and your processor, and rates change. Assessment and network fees, monthly plan fees, PCI fees and hardware are not included. Use your own statement for your own numbers.
The arithmetic is simple and it is the same one your processor does. Your monthly card volume is multiplied by the percentage rate, then the per-transaction fee is added once for every sale. The number of sales is your volume divided by your average ticket, which is why average ticket matters so much: at a $12 average ticket a 15-cent per-swipe fee is another 1.25% on top of the headline rate, and at a $120 ticket it is 0.125%.
That is also why the cheapest headline rate is often not the cheapest processor. A coffee shop running hundreds of small tickets cares about the cents. A shop selling $800 repairs barely notices them and should be looking at the percentage.
What this tool does not include: your monthly software or plan fee, PCI fees, statement fees, chargeback fees, gateway fees, or hardware. Those are the ones that turn a quoted 2.6% into something else on the statement, and they are the reason I read the statement rather than the rate sheet.
Send me these numbers and I will come back with a one-page breakdown against your actual statement — what you are paying, which line items are negotiable, and what I would change first. That part is free too.
I will put the one-page version together and come back to you within a business day. If it is urgent, grab 15 minutes instead.
Take the total of every fee on one month's statement and divide it by that month's card volume. That single number is what you are actually paying, and it is almost always higher than the rate you were quoted, because the quote is one line and the statement has twelve.
Because the per-transaction fee is charged per sale, not per dollar. At a low average ticket a fixed 15 or 30 cents is a large percentage of the sale; at a high one it disappears. Two businesses on the identical rate can have very different effective rates.
They are the rates Square and Clover published in 2026, and they are the same figures used in this site's Square and Clover fee articles. Processors change pricing — Square raised its online rate on January 13, 2026 — so confirm the current number on the provider's own pricing page before you decide anything.
A compliant dual-pricing or cash-discount program is designed to offset the card fee at the point of sale rather than remove it. Whether it fits depends on your business, your state and the card-brand rules, and it is not right for everyone. That is a conversation with your own statement in front of us, not a slider on a web page.
Monthly plan or software fees, PCI compliance fees, statement fees, chargeback fees, gateway fees and hardware. Those are exactly where the surprises live, which is why the honest version of this exercise is reading an actual statement.
Not on this. Growth, marketing and website services — including the website care plan — are month-to-month with no long-term commitment, and you can prepay annually for up to two months free. Payment processing is a separate thing: it is a merchant account and it has its own terms, which I go over with you personally on the free review so everything is clear before you decide.
Yes, any month. There is no cancellation fee and no notice period to argue about on the month-to-month services — I would rather earn the next month than hold you to a term you regret. If you cancel a website plan the domain is yours, registered in your name, and you can take the site elsewhere.
The Growth Audit is free and takes about two minutes to request. I look at what you have now and tell you straight what would move the needle first -- and what would not.
Prefer to talk now? Call or text (305) 215-6132Educational content, not legal, tax or financial advice. Market figures are general 2026 ranges that vary by business, volume and provider -- verify current pricing with each provider before you sign. Individual results vary.