Apple Pay and Google Pay: what do the wallets cost the merchant?

The short answer

Apple Pay and Google Pay cost the merchant no rate of their own. It is an entirely normal contactless card payment, where what is charged is the card stored in the wallet: if that is a debit card, the merchant pays the debit rate; if it is a credit card, the credit card rate. That is why Mollie lists both wallets in its price list without a price of their own, with the note “rate depends on the card used” (retrieved on 16 October 2026).

The merchant pays nothing to Apple or Google in the process. The price sits in the card, not in the phone — and so “what does Apple Pay cost me?” is really the question “what does my customer’s card cost me?”.

Why the wallet has no price of its own

Technically, a wallet payment is a contactless card payment over NFC. The phone hands the terminal not the real card number but a placeholder (token), yet the payment runs over the same card system as the plastic card: girocard, Visa or Mastercard. Accordingly, the same cost building blocks apply — interchange, scheme fee and the provider’s margin, which I broke down in the guide to card payment fees. There is no extra “wallet building block”.

That is why the payment network operators, too, do not list Apple Pay and Google Pay as a payment method of their own with a price of their own, but as an acceptance variant alongside girocard, debit and credit cards (as PAYONE does at the POS and online, retrieved on 16 October 2026). For the billing, all that counts is which card is in the wallet.

What the same payment costs depending on the card

So the rate depends not on the wallet but on the card type. The same 80-euro payment by Apple Pay costs the merchant very different amounts depending on what the customer has stored in the phone. Worked example with freely chosen but market-typical orders of magnitude (girocard on a blended tariff of 0.25 per cent plus 9 cents per-transaction fee; debit and credit card rates at the level of a common flat tariff):

Card in the wallet	assumed rate	cost at €80	effective
girocard	0.25 % + €0.09	€0.29	0.36 %
Visa / Debit Mastercard (debit)	0.89 %	€0.71	0.89 %
Visa / Mastercard credit card	1.90 %	€1.52	1.90 %

The columns are orders of magnitude, not terms anyone is entitled to. The point is not the exact figure but the direction: the wallet changes none of these rows. Anyone wanting to cut their Apple Pay cost is really cutting the card mix — which brand runs through your till is in the piece on girocard, Debit Mastercard and Visa Debit.

Online the same principle applies: Mollie assigns Apple Pay and Google Pay no fixed price but charges the underlying card — an EEA consumer card at 1.80 per cent plus 0.25 euros, a non-EEA card at 3.25 per cent plus 0.25 euros (Mollie price list, retrieved on 16 October 2026).

The hidden benefit: fewer PINs

One difference from the plastic card is worth real speed to the merchant. On a contactless payment with the plastic card, the terminal asks for the PIN above 50 euros or after several small payments in a row — that is what Article 11 of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/389 requires. With the wallet, by contrast, the customer approves the payment on the device itself by face or fingerprint; this approval counts as strong customer authentication, and the amount-dependent PIN requirement falls away. The payment is then a single tap even at 120 or 300 euros. How the 50-euro limit works for cards is in the guide to the contactless limit and the PIN.

For a bakery with lots of small amounts, or a café at the lunchtime peak, that is no side note: fewer PIN entries means a shorter queue and fewer drop-offs at the terminal.

What changed in 2024 — and what did not

For a long time Apple let only its own wallet reach the iPhone’s NFC chip. Since July 2024 that is different: the European Commission has made Apple’s commitments binding to open access to the “tap and go” technology to third parties — free of charge, across the entire European Economic Area and for ten years (Commission, press release of 11 July 2024, case AT.40452). Banks and payment service providers have since been able to offer their own wallets on the iPhone.

For the merchant, that changes nothing in the billing: whichever wallet the customer uses, what is paid is the card behind it. The competition arises one level up, among the wallet providers, not at your till.

What I advise merchants

1. Don’t ask about the wallet, ask about the card. Apple Pay and Google Pay have no price of their own; it is the card type that makes the payment expensive or cheap.
2. Leave contactless switched on. Every NFC-capable terminal accepts both wallets at no extra cost — there is no reason to disable them.
3. Charge no surcharge on Apple Pay or Google Pay. For consumer cards of the girocard, Visa and Mastercard systems, § 270a BGB forbids it anyway, and there are no extra costs.
4. Take the speed. The PIN requirement falling away noticeably speeds up small tickets in particular — a genuine reason to promote wallets actively.
5. Start with the card mix when costs bite: that is the only lever the wallet leaves untouched.