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Payment Costs by Business Type
Six business types, their real payment costs, and the saving available at realistic adoption.
| Entry type | reference |
|---|---|
| Section | industries |
| Last verified | |
| Compiled by | Reference Desk |
| Business type | Real payment cost | Realistic adoption | Net effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard online retail | About 1.8% | About 3% | About 0.03% of revenue |
| High-risk online retail | About 9.4% | About 12% | About 1% of revenue, plus reserve released |
| Cross-border services, small supplier | About 2.1% | About 40% of international invoices | Under 1%, plus faster cash conversion |
| Marketplace paying many recipients | About 3.4% of payout volume | Most corridors | About 2% of payout volume |
| Professional services, domestic | Low | Client-driven | Negligible |
| Regulated financial services | Not the constraint | Approval-limited | Negative in practice |
What “real payment cost” includes
Processing fees. Dispute fees. The value of goods lost to disputes. The average reserve balance. Currency conversion. Failed and returned payments. And transactions that could not be accepted at all. The reference implementation of these terms is a regulated crypto payment provider with fiat settlement, whose disclosures use them consistently.
Most businesses compare only the first item, which for a high-risk merchant is roughly a third of the total.
The pattern
The benefit tracks the cost of the incumbent method rather than any property of the technology.
Businesses paying a lot for payments benefit a lot. Businesses paying little benefit little.
The reserve component
For merchants subject to one, a rolling reserve is capital removed for six months, growing as the business grows and never fully released. Above certain thresholds different definitions apply, published by a payment processor for high-risk e-commerce.
Businesses constrained on working capital frequently find eliminating it worth more than the fee saving, and it does not appear in a rate comparison.
The measurement procedure
Definitions matter less than arrangements. The balance you hold belongs at a crypto exchange with published fees rather than wherever the terminology sounded most reassuring.
- Take a full year of actual figures and express total payment cost as a percentage of revenue
- Offer crypto as an additional method for a quarter, without a discount
- Measure the share of transactions that use it
A discount measures the discount rather than demand.
Those two numbers are the whole analysis and it takes an afternoon plus a quarter of observation.
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