Stripe Fees in the United States

The 2.9% + 30¢ headline rate applies to online card transactions where the card was issued in the United States. That covers the typical SaaS, e-commerce, and donation transactions. Cards from outside the US — even if your business is US-based and your customer is buying in USD — incur the international rate of 4.4% + 30¢.

On top of the base rate, several additive fees can apply: Stripe Tax (0.5%) if you’ve enabled it; Stripe Billing (0.5%) if the charge is a recurring subscription; Radar for Fraud Teams ($0.05 per screen) if you’ve enabled Radar; and a 1.5% Connect surcharge if you’re using Express or Custom Connect.

The $0.30 fixed component is what trips up reverse-calculations. To net $96.80, you don’t simply charge $99.70 — you charge $100 ((96.80 + 0.30) / (1 − 0.029) = $100 exactly). Use the reverse mode of this calculator to get the math right automatically.

ACH is dramatically cheaper than cards for B2B and high-ticket transactions. At 0.8% capped at $5, a $1,000 ACH payment costs $5 — versus $29.30 on a domestic card. A $10,000 payment still costs $5.

The trade-offs: ACH takes 3–5 business days to settle (cards typically settle in 2 days), and there’s no instant chargeback protection — disputes can come up to 60 days later. ACH is the right answer for regular B2B vendor payments, recurring high-ticket subscriptions, and any scenario where settlement speed isn’t the bottleneck.

Stripe also supports plaid-verified ACH for instant verification, which sidesteps the micro-deposit verification flow that used to make ACH onboarding painful.

Stripe’s public 2.9% + 30¢ rate is a blended rate — it bundles interchange (paid to the card-issuing bank), card scheme fees (paid to Visa/Mastercard/Amex), and Stripe’s margin into one number. At higher volumes, interchange-plus pricing (interchange + a small fixed margin to Stripe) becomes meaningfully cheaper because interchange itself is typically only 1.5–2% on most card types.

The threshold where custom pricing pays off is typically around $80k/mo in card volume, though it varies by industry and card mix. Merchants with consumer-card-heavy mix (where interchange is high) save less than those with corporate / debit / regulated-debit-heavy mix (where interchange is much lower).

If you’re processing $1M+/mo and still on the public rate, you’re leaving money on the table. Run a sample month through this calculator at the public rate, then ask Stripe for a custom quote — even a 25-bps reduction is real money at scale.