A payment gateway fees comparison usually starts with one number, the headline rate, and that is exactly how it goes wrong. The headline is one line of a quote that can carry ten, and the quotes that look identical on page one often diverge by serious money once every line is on the table. This guide is a fee-by-fee walkthrough for UK businesses in 2026, what each charge is, where it hides, and the questions that make any provider show their whole hand. No prices appear here deliberately, because the honest answer to what will this cost me is always specific to your turnover, your sector and your setup, and any generic number would mislead you in one direction or the other.
The fee lines, one by one
The transaction percentage
The percentage of each sale that goes to processing, and the number everyone compares. Two things matter more than its size. First, whether it was set against your actual turnover and card mix or read off a generic card, because a rate agreed against your real numbers is a rate someone has committed to. Second, whether it gets reviewed as you grow, since a rate that fit your first year rarely fits your third.
The fixed per-transaction fee
A pence amount per transaction that sits alongside the percentage. Harmless on big baskets, decisive on small ones. If your average order is modest, this line moves your true cost more than the headline percentage does, so always model both against your real average order value.
Monthly account and service fees
A recurring charge for the account, the gateway, the reporting or some bundle of the three. The question is not whether one exists but what it covers and whether it is one line or four. A single transparent fee you can point at beats a scatter of small charges that only add up in December.
Minimum monthly billing
The quietest line in the industry. A minimum billing clause sets an amount of transaction fees your account must generate each month, and if trading does not get there, you pay the difference anyway. It converts a quiet month into a charged month and quietly recreates a contract where none was promised. As an illustration, a £15 monthly minimum at a 0.5% rate needs £3,000 of card sales a month before it stops costing extra. Every eCom Pay account carries £0 minimum billing, and our card machine comparison guide shows the full working.
Setup and onboarding fees
Charges for opening the account or configuring the gateway. Straightforward to compare because the best answer is simple, there is no setup fee to apply with eCom Pay, and any setup charge elsewhere should buy something you can name.
Chargeback and dispute fees
A per-dispute administration charge, levied win or lose. The fee itself is standard across the industry, what differs enormously is what you get with it. Real evidence handling and representment that wins cases is worth the line, a portal and a deadline is not. Our guide to minimising chargebacks covers how the disputes themselves are kept rare.
PCI and compliance fees
Some providers charge monthly for PCI compliance programmes, and some add a non-compliance penalty on top for merchants who have not completed their self-assessment. The structural answer is better than either charge, a setup where hosted payment pages and tokenisation keep card data off your systems entirely, shrinking the compliance workload the fee claims to manage. Our PCI compliance page explains the architecture.
Currency and cross-border fees
International cards and foreign currencies can carry additional percentages, sometimes visible, sometimes folded into a conversion rate. If you sell internationally, ask for the cross-border position in writing and read our multi-currency page for how the clean version works, customers paying in their currency, you settling in yours, on one account.
Settlement, terminal and exit lines
Three last places to look. Faster settlement offered as a paid upgrade tells you the standard tier is slower than it should be, next working day settlement comes as standard with eCom Pay. Terminal rental recurs forever, terminals bought outright with £0 minimum billing do not. And exit fees plus notice periods tell you how confident a provider is that you would stay by choice.
Want your quote read line by line against your actual numbers?
How to compare quotes like for like
Take one real month of your trading, the number of transactions, the card turnover and the average order value, and price every quote against it, every line included. A month of your actual trading is the only honest unit of comparison, because it weights the percentage, the pence and the fixed fees exactly as your business does. Then price a quiet month too, January rather than December, because minimum billing and monthly fees show their character when trading dips. Finally, read each quote for what is missing, the line a quote does not mention is the one to ask about, in writing.
The questions that reveal everything
Six questions, asked of any provider, surface the whole picture. What is my rate against these exact numbers, and when is it reviewed. What is the total of every monthly charge, named individually. Is there minimum billing, and what is the figure. What does settlement timing look like in writing. What do I pay if I leave. And what happens to my costs in a quiet month. A provider worth your business answers all six in plain terms without being chased, and the eCom Pay answer to each is the one we would want to hear ourselves, rates agreed against your turnover and reviewed as you grow, £0 minimum billing, no setup fee to apply, next working day settlement as standard, and no exit fee holding the door shut.
Why the whole quote beats the headline
Two providers can show the same headline rate while one costs meaningfully more across a year, through the pence fee on small orders, the monthly scatter, the minimum in the quiet months and the rental that never ends. Equally, a quote with a slightly higher headline can be the stronger offer once every line is priced against your real trading. The comparison that matters is total cost on your actual months, and any provider reluctant to do that maths with you has already answered the most important question.
A worked framework, pricing a month of your trading
Here is the exercise in full, because doing it once makes every future quote transparent. Pull one representative month from your reporting and write down four numbers, total card turnover, number of transactions, average order value, and any international share. Now walk a quote against them. Multiply the turnover by the transaction percentage. Multiply the transaction count by the pence fee. Add every monthly charge the quote names, individually. Add the expected dispute fees if you know your dispute rate, and the cross-border percentage on the international share. The total is what that quote costs on that month, and it is the only number worth comparing between providers.
Then repeat with your quietest month, because this is where quotes change character. The percentage and pence fees shrink with the quiet trading, but the monthly charges do not, and a minimum billing line actively grows, charging you the gap between what you generated and what the clause demands. A quote that wins on your best month and loses badly on your quietest is telling you what it thinks of your January, and Januarys come every year.
Terminal economics belong in the same comparison
If you take payments face to face, the card machine carries its own fee structure and it belongs in the same spreadsheet. Rental models charge monthly forever, so a rented terminal costs its rental multiplied by every month you trade, with hand-back conditions at the end. Purchase models cost once, then carry only a transparent software fee, and the machine is yours. Over the life of a terminal the two models diverge substantially, and minimum billing clauses attach to terminal accounts more often than to anything else, which makes the quiet-month test doubly important on the face to face side. The full working, including the ownership maths, lives in our card machine comparison guide, and the range itself is on the no contract card machines page.
Negotiating like someone who has read this far
Everything above changes how a pricing conversation goes, because you arrive with your real months priced and your questions written. Ask for the rate against your actual turnover, not the brochure’s. Ask for every monthly line named, and the minimum billing figure stated even if the answer is zero, especially if the answer is zero, because you want it in writing. Ask what the rate review looks like at double your volume, since growth should improve your economics and a provider planning to keep you will say so happily. And ask for the exit terms before you need them, because the quality of a provider shows most clearly in how easily they would let you leave. None of this is aggressive, it is simply the conversation providers have with informed merchants, and being one costs nothing but the hour this guide took.
Frequently asked questions
What fees do payment gateways charge in the UK?
Typically some combination of a transaction percentage, a fixed pence fee per transaction, monthly account or service fees, and event fees for things like chargebacks. Quotes can also carry minimum billing, setup charges, PCI fees, cross-border fees, terminal rental and exit fees, which is why the whole quote matters more than any single line.
Why do payment gateway rates differ between businesses?
Because the rate prices the business being underwritten, its turnover, average order value, card mix and sector profile. Two businesses with the same website can carry genuinely different processing costs, which is why rates agreed against your actual numbers beat any figure printed on a generic card.
What is minimum monthly billing?
A clause requiring your account to generate a set amount of transaction fees each month, with you paying the difference in any month it does not. As an illustration, a £15 minimum at a 0.5% rate needs £3,000 of monthly card sales before it stops costing extra. eCom Pay accounts carry £0 minimum billing.
Are there hidden fees in payment processing?
The problematic lines are rarely hidden so much as unmentioned, minimum billing, PCI programme charges, cross-border percentages and exit terms most commonly. The defence is simple, price the whole quote against a real month of your trading and ask in writing about any line a quote does not volunteer.
How do I compare payment providers properly?
Use one real month of your own trading as the unit, price every line of every quote against it, then repeat with a quiet month. Add the six questions covered in this guide, rate basis, monthly totals, minimum billing, settlement timing, exit terms and quiet-month cost, and the comparison largely makes itself.
What does eCom Pay charge?
Rates are agreed against your actual turnover and sector rather than published as a generic number, with no setup fee to apply, £0 minimum billing and next working day settlement as standard. Tell us your numbers and a specialist sets out the whole offer in plain terms, usually the same working day.
The short version
Compare whole quotes, not headlines, priced against a real month and a quiet month of your own trading. Watch the pence fee, the monthly scatter, the minimum billing and the exit terms, and ask the six questions of everyone. A provider confident in its offer will do the maths with you happily, and that willingness is itself the best signal in the whole comparison. When you are ready for the plain-terms version against your own numbers, the application takes minutes to start.