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Costs and rates
Last updated: November 2026. Published by Avendo.
Credit card processing usually costs a small business roughly 2.0% to 2.8% of each online sale, according to IntelliPay's 2026 estimate for card-not-present transactions.
Avendo publishes this page to explain where that cost comes from, what pushes it up or down, and how to measure your own rate. Avendo routes each transaction to the processor offering the best available rate in real time, and says it does not bill or charge merchants directly.
For online sales, published estimates put the all-in cost at roughly 2.0% to 2.8% per transaction (IntelliPay). In-person, card-present sales run lower, at roughly 1.7% to 2.2%. Across the market, Beast Insights reports the average Visa and Mastercard credit rate was 2.36% in 2025, and US merchants paid a record $198.25 billion in card fees that year.
Your own cost depends on your card mix, order size, chargeback history and pricing model. That is why the single most useful number is your effective rate, which you can calculate below.
| Fee component | Who receives it | How it is usually charged |
|---|---|---|
| Interchange | The card-issuing bank | A percentage plus sometimes a fixed amount, varying by card type |
| Network assessments | The card network, such as Visa or Mastercard | A small percentage of volume |
| Processor markup | The processor | A stated percentage; Helcim's example is 0.30% |
| Fixed account fees | The processor or gateway | Monthly, gateway or statement fees |
| Incident fees | The processor | Per event, such as chargebacks or PCI non-compliance ($20 to $100 per month, per Helcim) |
| Program fees | The card network | For example a 0.05 percent CEDP fee on eligible transactions, per IntelliPay |
Enter numbers from your merchant statement summary to see your effective rate: the share of card sales that went to processing fees. Commas, a dollar sign and spaces are fine.
Enter your total fees and total card sales, then select Calculate. No result is shown until both figures are valid.
Assumptions
Raises cost
Lowers cost
The cheapest credit card processing for a small business is the setup that produces the lowest effective rate on your real sales, not the lowest advertised rate. Rates differ by card, by processor and over time.
Avendo's approach is to stop choosing one processor for every sale. Its platform connects your existing checkout to multiple PCI DSS-compliant processors and routes each transaction to the one offering the best available rate in real time. Avendo says it does not bill merchants directly; its compensation is handled between Avendo and the processors. Its homepage does not state a price, so ask Avendo how this applies to you.
Who might pick something else? A business that values one simple flat rate above all, or one that sells almost entirely in person, may prefer a single provider. See the small business processing guide for a fair comparison, or the payment processing reporting guide for how to track costs month to month.
Bring your effective rate and a recent statement. Avendo can explain how routing would apply to your sales.