You refunded the sale. The processing fee may be gone for good.
Returning the customer's money does not necessarily return the cost of accepting it.
Stripe documents that its original processing fees are not returned when a completed payment is refunded. A cancellation before completion or a payment reversal can be treated differently. That distinction matters: “we do not charge an extra refund fee” would not, by itself, mean the original fee comes back.
Consider a hypothetical $1,000 completed card payment priced at 2.9% plus 30¢. Its original fee is $29.30. If that fee is retained after a full refund, the customer receives $1,000 and your business is still out $29.30 in processing costs. Twenty identical refunds would leave $586 in original fees. Shipping, labor, and other charges are outside this example.
Pick a refunded order and follow both entries: the amount returned to the customer and any fee credit to your business. Then review why customers asked for those refunds. A clearer product description or delivery expectation may be worth investigating alongside the processing agreement.
The refund fee calculator.
See how much of the original processing cost can remain after you return the sale.
Enter your figures to see an illustration.
Assumes full refunds and that all original processing fees are retained. No additional refund fees included. Dollar inputs accept two decimal places; the rate accepts four. The illustration rounds the combined result to cents; transaction-level rounding and your agreement may differ. Inputs stay on this page and are not saved.
The evidence: Stripe's refund documentation. Provider-specific policy; your agreement may differ.
You can win the chargeback—and still pay for it.
Recovering the disputed sale and recovering every dispute-related fee are different outcomes.
Stripe's published US standard pricing lists a $15 fee for receiving a dispute and another $15 for responding manually. Winning returns the countered fee. Its documentation says the received fee is not returned unless the contract states otherwise. This example concerns that manual response path; other products and agreements can have different charges.
Under those terms, receiving and manually countering one dispute initially means $30 in dispute fees. Win it, recover the $15 countered fee, and $15 remains. That figure excludes the original processing fee, any applicable network charges, and the time your team spends preparing evidence.
Give the person handling disputes a simple record: amount disputed, response deadline, fees charged, outcome, and credits received. A favorable decision should trigger a reconciliation, not just a celebration. Save the outcome notice with the billing record so someone can verify exactly what came back.
The evidence: Stripe US pricing and its dispute-fee rules, reviewed September 26, 2026.
A declined payment can still generate a bill.
The number of completed orders may not be the number of billable payment events.
Adyen's invoice guidance identifies authorization-related scheme fees for canceled, expired, refused, and retried refused transactions. These are different from the settled sales on which other charges are calculated. Whether and how a merchant pays for attempts depends on the provider, pricing arrangement, and applicable fee.
A fee can attach to the request, even when no sale settles. Check your provider’s fee schedule.
Imagine a purely hypothetical 5¢ charge on each of 10,000 billable attempts. That is $500, regardless of how many of those attempts become orders. This is arithmetic, not an Adyen price. It shows why a low per-attempt amount can deserve attention when transaction counts grow.
Ask for the quantity behind each authorization or gateway line item. Compare it with completed payments, then have your technical team explain duplicate submissions, customer retries, and automated retry behavior. Changing retries blindly can also lose legitimate sales; first establish which attempts are useful, which are billable, and which can be avoided.
The evidence: Adyen's invoice fee explanation. This does not mean every declined payment is charged by every provider.
The “cheaper” rate can produce the bigger bill.
A percentage without transaction size is only part of a price.
Take two hypothetical quotes: A charges 2.5% plus 30¢ per payment; B charges 2.9% plus 10¢. At $50,000 across 2,000 payments, A costs $1,850 and B costs $1,650. The offer with the lower percentage costs $200 more that month. Repeat that exact activity for twelve months and the difference is $2,400.
Why? Those 2,000 fixed charges add $600 to A and $200 to B. B's higher percentage adds only $200 compared with A, leaving B ahead by $200. Change the average payment size and the answer changes. In this simplified comparison, the offers tie at a $50 average payment; below that, B is cheaper, and above that, A is cheaper.
Both examples exclude all other charges and are not NUMUS quotes. For an actual comparison, request the complete schedule and use the same sales, transaction count, card mix, and payment channels for each offer. Our processing fee guide explains the broader bill, while the fee calculator lets you explore percentage and fixed charges together.
Which quote costs less?
A lower percentage can come with a higher total. Change your volume and transaction count to see why.
Average payment —
Compare the numbersEnter your figures to compare monthly processing cost.
Two hypothetical offers, not NUMUS pricing. Includes only the stated percentage and per-transaction fee; excludes all other charges. Totals are rounded once to cents. Actual transaction-level rounding, card mix and contract terms can change the comparison. Inputs are not saved.
The evidence: original calculations shown above. Published provider pricing illustrates why percentage and fixed components must both be considered.
A missing field can mean a missed pricing opportunity.
For eligible commercial-card payments, what your system sends can matter alongside what your customer spends.
Adyen documents lower interchange opportunities for eligible Visa and Mastercard transactions carrying valid enhanced data. If required fields are missing or invalid, the data can be dropped and the transaction may not qualify. Eligibility varies; its current documentation specifies Visa Level 3 support and Mastercard Level 2 and Level 3 support from April 1, 2026.
The right data.
The right eligibility.
The right agreement.
All three matter before a lower interchange rate can become a lower merchant bill.
A feature labeled “Level 3 enabled” is a starting point for verification. Ask for evidence of eligible transactions, accepted data, and the resulting pricing. Also check your agreement: a lower underlying interchange cost does not by itself establish that your own bill decreases by the same amount.
Start with a small sample of business-card payments. Have your provider explain the qualification result in plain language and your finance team trace it to the statement. Our Level 3 processing guide goes deeper into that review.
The evidence: Adyen's enhanced-data requirements. No blanket eligibility or savings promise.
Your money can be yours—and unavailable when you need it.
A reserve can create a cash-flow gap even when the sales dashboard looks healthy.
PayPal describes rolling reserves that hold a portion of receipts and release it later. Its example is 10% held for 90 days, with day-one funds released on day 91. That is an illustration of a reserve arrangement, not a universal requirement or a quote for your business.
Under a simplified scenario of $100,000 in steady sales per 30 days, a 10% reserve could accumulate approximately $30,000 by the end of day 90, before releases begin. That is restricted cash, not automatically an expense or permanent loss. If the business borrows to bridge the gap, the financing has its own cost.
Model the cash you can actually use against supplier bills and payroll. Our rolling reserve calculator explores the timing; the payout-delay checklist helps structure a provider conversation.
What could a reserve hold?
Model the cash that builds up before the first rolling-reserve release.
Working capital held. Not a fee.
Enter your figures to see an illustration.
Assumes a constant reserve percentage, steady volume, no deductions and no early releases. Actual reserve terms and timing vary. Daily amount accepts two decimals; percentage accepts four; days must be a whole number. Total rounds once to cents. Inputs are not saved.
The evidence: PayPal's reserve explanation. Actual terms and release conditions are account-specific.
Leaving can cost more than you expected.
The cancellation conversation deserves a place beside the sales conversation.
There is a documented reason to take exit terms seriously. The FTC says First American Payment Systems paid $4.9 million to settle a case alleging misleading sales pitches and hidden fees. The agency's refund page identifies early termination fees in the affected program. This is a specific enforcement matter, not evidence that every processor's cancellation charge is improper.
Before you sign—or move—put the dates and obligations on one page. Check the notice method, any renewal date, termination charge, and whether equipment or software has a separate agreement. Ask for written confirmation of what ends and what continues. A verbal “we will take care of it” leaves too much to reconstruct later.
Keep the cancellation request, acknowledgment, and final statement together. If a later debit appears, you can ask about an exact amount and date with the records in front of you.
The evidence: FTC settlement and refund record. The $4.9 million is the settlement amount, not an estimate of any reader's loss.
Seven questions. Get the answers in writing.
Check a question when you have an answer you can verify in the proposed agreement.
0 / 7 answered
A record of questions answered, not a provider rating or an approval decision. No contact details required. Checkmarks stay on this page and reset when you reload.
Before you call your processor.
Does this mean my processor is overcharging me?
It means there are specific terms worth checking. Compare your actual charge with your signed agreement and the activity behind it. Ask the provider to explain any mismatch before deciding what to change. A disclosed fee can still matter to your margins.
Which number should I check first?
Start with the total fees on one complete month's statement, then identify what each charge covers. Keep refunds, disputes, and restricted funds visible as separate items. Combining everything into one “savings” figure can obscure what is an expense, what is timing, and what is hypothetical.
What should I bring to a comparison?
Use your agreement, full fee schedule, recent statements, and transaction counts. Add questions about refunds, disputes, funding, and cancellation. Remove customer and card details from any document you share, and use the provider's secure document process when requested.
Should I switch if I find one of these charges?
Request the explanation first. Then compare the complete cost and operating fit of your alternatives, including transition work. A lower rate is useful only in the context of the full arrangement. This article does not promise that switching will eliminate these costs.
How do I make this useful for my team?
Choose the two questions most relevant to your business and assign someone to find the answers. Ask your bookkeeper to locate the charges, your operations lead to confirm the payment activity, and your provider to explain the terms. Keep one shared list of confirmed answers and unresolved questions for your next review.
The documentation behind the details.
Reviewed September 26, 2026. Provider policies and prices can change; your country, product, and signed terms matter. Examples are labeled and do not describe a NUMUS offer.