Card payment: fees for merchants — eight cost components and what is negotiable

The short answer

The fee for card payment is not a price, it is a sum. It consists of a percentage share of turnover, a fixed amount per booking and several monthly and one-off items. Anyone comparing offers by the percentage alone is comparing the smallest part of the bill. The merchant has to pay the whole sum but can negotiate only the provider's share, and does so with records the law guarantees.

What does card payment cost the merchant?

Card payment costs the merchant a percentage discount rate per card type (girocard usually 0.18 to 0.3 per cent, consumer credit cards around 1 to 1.5 per cent), a fixed transaction fee of 7 to 11 cents per payment and monthly fixed costs for terminal and service; flat-rate providers such as SumUp instead charge a flat 1.39 per cent with no monthly fee. For a business with €20,000 in card turnover a month, the worked example below comes to around €190 on a blended tariff or €278 on the flat rate.

The ranges are orders of magnitude from provider information and sector overviews (CCV, Adyen, SumUp; retrieval dates in the sources block), not terms anyone is entitled to. What the calculation does show is which line costs you the most money.

Worked example, all inputs assumed: 800 card payments a month, average ticket €25, so €20,000 in card turnover, of which 80 per cent girocard and 20 per cent consumer credit cards from the EEA.

Item	Assumption	Blended tariff per month	Flat rate 1.39 % per month
Discount rate girocard	€16,000 × 0.25 %	€40.00	included in the flat rate
Discount rate credit card	€4,000 × 1.2 %	€48.00	included in the flat rate
Transaction fee	800 × 9 cents	€72.00	none
Terminal rental	€20	€20.00	none, device bought once
Service fee	€10	€10.00	none
Total		€190.00 = 0.95 %	€278.00 = 1.39 %

Two things stand out. First, on the blended tariff the largest item is not the discount rate but the transaction fee: €72 of €190. Halve your ticket size, so 1,600 payments for the same turnover, and the blended tariff costs €262, almost level with the flat rate. Second, the card mix tips the calculation: if the credit card share rises to half, the blended tariff costs €247. One-off set-up costs and the purchase price of a flat-rate card reader are not included in either column; spread over the contract term, they belong in the comparison.

Running the numbers for your own business takes three figures from the till report: monthly card turnover, number of card payments and girocard share. With those three figures any offer can be reduced to a monthly total; how the individual components arise is set out in the sections that follow.

What sits inside the percentage

The percentage merchant service charge, known in the market as the merchant discount rate (Disagio), has three recipients on credit cards:

Component	Goes to	Capped by law?
Interchange	issuing bank	yes, 0.2 % debit / 0.3 % credit on consumer cards from the EEA
Scheme fee	Visa, Mastercard, girocard scheme	no
Margin	acquirer or payment network operator	no, negotiable

The cap does not apply to corporate cards, to cards from outside the European Economic Area, or to three-party systems such as American Express. An American corporate credit card therefore costs a multiple of the German girocard at the same terminal.

girocard has had no centrally set fee since 2014; the rates are negotiated with the issuing banks and in the market usually lie between 0.18 and 0.3 per cent. Since 1 January 2026 a scheme manager fee of 0.00209 per cent of girocard turnover has come on top — a small amount, but an example of how items arise that no quotation mentions.

Who gets which share of the merchant discount rate?

Model calculation for a consumer credit card from the EEA, ticket of 50 euros, agreed rate 1.20 per cent, that is 60 cents in fees:

Recipient	Rate	Share of the 60 cents	Negotiable?
Customer's bank (interchange)	0.30 %, capped by law	15 cents	no
Visa / Mastercard (scheme fee)	0.1 to 0.2 % of card turnover	5 to 10 cents	no
Your acquirer or payment network operator	the rest of your terms	35 to 40 cents	yes

Only the first line is capped (Article 4 of the Interchange Fee Regulation). The range for the scheme fee comes from the advice portal KartenKosten.de (article of 22 June 2026) and is an order of magnitude, not a published price list — PAYONE expressly states that this fee is “not regulated by law” and varies “considerably” depending on the card product and transaction type. The third line is quantified only by those who disclose it: Adyen publicly charges Interchange++ plus 0.60 per cent plus 0.11 euros per transaction (adyen.com, retrieved on 21 September 2026).

From this follows the most common misconception in the market: anyone paying 1.39 per cent is not paying “more than the EU allows”. What is capped is the interchange fee, not your merchant service charge. And from that follows the only negotiating position you have — the third line. No provider can negotiate the first two, whatever is claimed in the meeting.

What is interchange?

Interchange, in German Interbankenentgelt, is the amount the merchant’s bank pays to the cardholder’s bank on every card payment. In the EU it is capped by law for consumer cards issued in the EEA: at most 0.2 per cent on debit cards and 0.3 per cent on credit cards (Articles 3 and 4 of Regulation (EU) 2015/751).

You never receive interchange as a separate invoice. Your acquirer pays it to the issuing bank and recovers it through your merchant service charge; it is therefore the floor below which no provider can price without losing money. What that means in cents:

Customer’s card	Interchange at most	on a €20 ticket	on a €50 ticket	on a €200 ticket
Consumer debit card from the EEA (Debit Mastercard, Visa Debit)	0.2 %	4 cents	10 cents	40 cents
Consumer credit card from the EEA	0.3 %	6 cents	15 cents	60 cents
Commercial card, card from outside the EEA	not capped
American Express, other three-party schemes	no interchange in the strict sense, Amex bills directly

Three misunderstandings come up regularly in conversations with merchants. First: the cap applies to the interchange fee, not to your merchant service charge; 1.39 per cent on a credit card does not break any law. Second: girocard has had no centrally set interchange since 2014; the fees are negotiated between payment network operators and banks. Third: in the US there is no such cap for credit cards, which is why a court battle is currently being fought there over a tenth of a percentage point — the background is in my report on the US interchange settlement. Which cards fall outside the cap is explained in my guide to commercial and non-EEA cards.

What does girocard cost compared with a credit card?

Card type	Interchange regulated?	Market-standard merchant service charges	What drives the rate
girocard	no, individually negotiated since 2014	0.18 to 0.3 %, 1.39 % on a flat-rate tariff	the network operator's negotiating power
Consumer credit card from the EEA	yes, 0.3 %	around 1 to 1.5 %	scheme fee and provider margin
Corporate and non-EEA cards	no	markedly above that, surcharge varies by provider	card programme, cross-border fees
American Express	no, three-party system	3.95 % at Adyen (as at 21 September 2026)	Amex sets its own prices

The column with market-standard charges gives orders of magnitude from provider and comparison sources, not terms you are entitled to; only the caps in column two are documented and therefore beyond dispute.

The practical difference becomes visible in the average ticket. In 2025 that was 37.25 euros for girocard payments (girocard annual figures, press release of 11 February 2026). On a mixed tariff of 0.25 per cent plus 9 cents, that payment costs 18.3 cents, that is 0.49 per cent. On a flat-rate tariff of 1.39 per cent, the same payment costs 51.8 cents. That is why the card mix belongs before any contract decision: which brand really runs through your terminal is covered in my article on girocard, Debit Mastercard and Visa Debit.

The three pricing models

Interchange++: all three components are shown separately per transaction. Adyen publishes the model openly: Interchange++ plus 0.60 per cent plus 0.11 euros per transaction. With a card mix heavy on girocard and EEA debit cards this is cheap; the monthly statement is correspondingly complex.

Blended (flat rate): one percentage for almost all cards, for example 1.39 per cent at SumUp including girocard. Maximally predictable, but the provider prices in the most expensive case. Anyone taking mostly girocard is subsidising other merchants' credit card customers.

Subscription-tiered: the percentage falls in return for a monthly fee. Worth it above a certain turnover, which you have to work out beforehand.

Legally, Interchange++ is the default: Article 9 of the Interchange Fee Regulation prescribes unblending, unless the merchant asks in writing for blending. In the market it is the other way round.

The fixed items nobody advertises

Item	Usual order of magnitude
Per-transaction fee per booking	7 to 11 cents
Terminal rental	10 to 30 euros a month
Service flat fee / network operation	5 to 15 euros a month
Setup / activation	25 to 100 euros one-off
Collective account charge	up to 4 cents per girocard transaction
Stability or price adjustment surcharge	one-off, for example 27.50 euros
Chargeback fee	20 euros per chargeback at Stripe
Minimum invoice amount	depends on the provider, often not quantified

Why the per-transaction fee decides everything on small tickets

Nine cents per booking is:

• on a ticket of 5 euros: 1.8 per cent
• on 20 euros: 0.45 per cent
• on 100 euros: 0.09 per cent

For bakeries, kiosks, cafés and hairdressers the fixed fee is therefore often more expensive than the entire merchant discount rate. Conversely, a pure percentage model with no fixed amount is cheap for small amounts and expensive for high tickets. The only sensible comparison needs three inputs: average ticket size, monthly turnover, girocard share of the card mix.

Why do card fees differ so much from sector to sector?

Not because providers treat sectors differently, but because three variables diverge from sector to sector: ticket size, card mix and chargeback risk. Ticket size has the strongest effect. Model calculation, mixed tariff of 0.25 per cent plus 9 cents against a flat rate of 1.39 per cent; the ticket sizes are assumed orders of magnitude, only the 37.25 euros is documented:

Sector	Assumed ticket	Mixed tariff	Effective	Flat rate 1.39 %
Bakery, kiosk	€4.00	10.0 cents	2.50 %	5.6 cents
Snack bar, café	€12.00	12.0 cents	1.00 %	16.7 cents
Retail (girocard average 2025)	€37.25	18.3 cents	0.49 %	51.8 cents
Restaurant	€60.00	24.0 cents	0.40 %	83.4 cents
Furniture, electricals, garage	€300.00	84.0 cents	0.28 %	€4.17

The tipping point between the two models lies just under a ticket size of 8 euros: below it the flat rate wins, above it the mixed tariff — regardless of how well anyone has negotiated. On top comes the card mix: hotels and hospitality see more credit and foreign cards than a bakery, and that is exactly where the missing cap on corporate and non-EEA cards bites. In chargeback-prone sectors the acquirer adds risk on top. Anyone searching for card fees by sector is in truth searching for their own ticket size.

Rent or buy

A rented device at 12.90 euros a month costs 619.20 euros over 48 months, a purchased device 100 to 200 euros. The rental buys service, replacement and up-to-date certification, not hardware. That is a legitimate price if the contract guarantees replacement within a set period. Contract terms range from zero (SumUp, Zettle, myPOS) through twelve months (CCV) to 36 months and more in classic bank distribution.

Who pays the fees for card payments?

The merchant, in full. All three recipients from the table above are paid out of a single charge that your acquirer or payment network operator bills to you: it passes the interchange on to the customer's bank and the scheme fee to the card scheme, and keeps the rest. The customer pays nothing at the terminal. Whatever they pay their own bank for the card, the account or use abroad is in their own contract and never appears on your statement.

You may not pass the costs on. Section 270a BGB prohibits surcharges for payment with consumer cards of the four-party systems (girocard, Visa, Mastercard) and for SEPA credit transfers and direct debits (wording checked on 25.09.2026). The fee therefore comes entirely out of your margin. With a hospitality margin in the low single digits, the difference between a 0.4 and a 1.4 per cent merchant discount rate decides a noticeable part of the profit.

Steering in the other direction remains permitted: under section 675f(6) BGB your payment service provider may not forbid you from offering a discount or other incentive for a particular means of payment. “Card payment without fees” therefore does not exist for merchants in the long run — where no percentage is shown, the price sits in the rental, a fixed fee or a promotion with an end date.

Card payments without fees — is that possible?

No, not for your customers’ cards. Every card payment triggers at least interchange and the scheme fee; a provider advertising “0 per cent” is either waiving it only for certain cards, only for a limited time, or recovering the money elsewhere.

The variants sold in the market as “no fees”, and what lies behind them:

Offer	what is actually free	where the price sits
“0 %” at SumUp	only payments with a SumUp card, i.e. a card SumUp issues itself (pricing page, retrieved 06.10.2026)	all other cards cost 1.39 % on the basic plan
Promotional rate without merchant discount	a period or a volume allowance	price after the promotion ends, often tied to a contract term
Monthly flat fee without a percentage	the rate per payment	base fee that becomes expensive at low turnover
Surcharge to the customer	seemingly everything for you	prohibited in consumer business for girocard, Visa, Mastercard and SEPA (section 270a BGB)

The first row is the most interesting because it shows how the model works: if the provider is both acquirer and card issuer, the interchange stays in-house. For your customers that hardly matters — who pays at the bakery with a SumUp business card? What counts for you is the rate in the second column of every other row.

What remains allowed: you may give cash payers a discount or post a minimum amount for cards, provided your acceptance contract does not rule it out — under section 675f(6) BGB it may not prohibit you from offering a discount for a particular payment method at all. Whether that pays off is another question, because cash costs money too: counting, change, deposits, insurance. The honest counter-calculation is in the guide Cash or card: what cash really costs a merchant.

What do SumUp, Zettle and myPOS cost in comparison?

For purely domestic consumer cards the three basic plans sit close together: 1.29 per cent at myPOS, 1.39 per cent at SumUp and Zettle, each without a monthly fee. The difference lies in the subscription plans, in girocard acceptance and in everything that is not on the pricing page.

Pricing pages as of 06.10.2026, in-person payments, prices net as stated by the provider:

Plan	Monthly fee	domestic / EEA consumer cards	premium, international, Amex cards	girocard
SumUp Standard	€0	1.39 %	1.39 %	yes
SumUp Zahlungen Plus	€19 (or €199 a year)	0.79 %	1.39 %	yes
Zettle (PayPal Point of Sale)	€0	1.39 %	1.39 %	not in the list of payment methods
myPOS One	€0	1.29 %	2.69 %	yes
myPOS Plus	€19	0.89 %	2.49 %	yes
myPOS Pro	€39	0.79 %	2.49 %	yes

Sources: sumup.com/de-de/kosten, zettle.com/de/kosten and the Zettle help page on supported payment methods, mypos.com/de-de/pricing-and-fees, all retrieved on 06.10.2026. The girocard column for SumUp relies on research dated 01.08.2026 (native girocard acceptance since August 2025). Zettle lists girocard in neither of its two official lists; customers holding a pure girocard without an international co-badge cannot pay there.

Worked example for a café, all cards domestic consumer cards, excluding hardware costs. Ticket size plays no role here because none of the six plans charges a fixed fee per payment:

Card turnover per month	SumUp Standard	SumUp Plus	Zettle	myPOS One	myPOS Plus	myPOS Pro
€1,500	€20.85	€30.85	€20.85	€19.35	€32.35	€50.85
€4,000	€55.60	€50.60	€55.60	€51.60	€54.60	€70.60
€10,000	€139.00	€98.00	€139.00	€129.00	€108.00	€118.00

The tipping points can be calculated directly: SumUp Plus beats SumUp’s own basic plan from €3,167 of card turnover a month, myPOS Plus beats One from €4,750, and myPOS Pro beats Plus only from €20,000. SumUp quotes individual terms from €10,000 of monthly turnover, Zettle offers individual rates by separate agreement; that is the point at which an offer with separately itemised rates (interchange++, see above) becomes a serious option.

Three things belong in the comparison that no table shows:

• Card mix: at myPOS, premium, commercial and international cards cost 2.49 to 2.69 per cent, at SumUp and Zettle 1.39 per cent. A hotel with many foreign guests therefore calculates differently from a kiosk.
• Money flow: at Zettle the money first lands in the PayPal business account, at myPOS in the myPOS account. Whether and what forwarding to your own bank account costs is in the respective fee schedule, not on the pricing page.
• Chargebacks: SumUp and Zettle do not publish their chargeback fee on the pricing page (as of research on 01.08.2026). Ask about it before you sign.

There is therefore no blanket cheapest alternative to SumUp or Zettle: at low turnover with domestic cards it is myPOS One according to these price lists, from around €3,800 of monthly turnover SumUp Plus, and at five-figure monthly turnover a classic contract with separate rates for girocard and credit cards.

Can card fees be negotiated?

Yes, but only the part that stays with your provider. Interchange and scheme fee are the same for every acquirer; negotiating the merchant discount rate in practice means negotiating the margin and the fixed items.

Item	Negotiable?	Your argument
Interchange	no, capped or set by the scheme	—
Scheme fee	no	—
Margin within the percentage	yes	monthly turnover, card mix, competing offer
Per-transaction fee	yes	number of bookings, low ticket size
Terminal rental, service fee	yes	bought device as the alternative
Setup	yes, often entirely	contract term
Term, price adjustment clause	yes	trade-off for better rates

Two articles of the Interchange Fee Regulation give you the material for this (wording checked on 28.09.2026 in the full text at freirecht.de, as EUR-Lex was unavailable behind a bot block):

• Article 9: The acquirer must offer and charge merchant service charges broken down by card category and brand, and the contract must state the merchant service charge, the interchange fee and the scheme fee separately — unless you have asked in writing for them to be blended. If your contract shows only one rate for everything, check whether you signed such a request somewhere.
• Article 12: After every card payment your payment service provider must send you the amount and the fees, with the merchant service charge and interchange fee shown separately. They may be aggregated only with your express prior consent; the contract may provide for delivery at least monthly.

From this data you take the three figures every negotiation needs: monthly card turnover, number of bookings and girocard share. With them you obtain a competing offer that shows the same items and put it to your current provider.

What can come out of this is shown by a model calculation with freely chosen figures, not a commitment by any provider: 20,000 euros card turnover a month, ticket 25 euros, i.e. 800 payments, of which 8,000 euros on credit cards.

Lever	Change	Saving per month	per year
Credit card margin	minus 0.2 percentage points on €8,000	€16.00	€192.00
Per-transaction fee	7 instead of 9 cents, 800 bookings	€16.00	€192.00
Terminal rental	€12.90 instead of €19.90	€7.00	€84.00
total		€39.00	€468.00

At this ticket size the two cents on the per-transaction fee are worth as much as two tenths of a point of margin. Anyone negotiating only the percentage leaves half on the table — more on smaller tickets.

Checklist before signing

1. Every item in the table above in writing, with an amount or “not applicable”.
2. girocard shown separately from credit cards.
3. Term, renewal, notice period.
4. Replacement period for faulty terminals.
5. Price adjustment clauses: who may raise prices, and when?
6. For an existing contract: check the breakdown under Article 9, request the individual data under Article 12 as a monthly file, then renegotiate with a competing offer in hand.