Where your money goes: a plain-English guide to transaction fees
Platform fee, payment gateway, apps — the charges on a single order add up in places that are easy to miss. Here's how to read your real cost per sale.
Kabir Shah
Payments & Finance
7 min read
Ask a merchant what they pay to sell online and most will quote their payment gateway rate. But the true cost of a sale is usually stacked from several layers, and the layers you forget are the ones that quietly eat your margin.
The three charges on a typical order
- The platform fee — what your store software takes, often as a percentage of each sale.
- The payment gateway fee — what the processor charges to move the money.
- The app tax — the per-order or per-feature cost of the plugins doing the work.
Read your cost per order, not per month
Monthly plan prices are easy to compare. The fees that scale with every sale are where platforms quietly differ — and where growth either rewards you or punishes you.
Why a flat, low fee matters more as you grow
A percentage that looks small on a single order compounds across thousands. The question worth asking isn't 'what's the headline price?' — it's 'what does my hundred-thousandth order cost me, and who keeps that money?'
You can't negotiate away every fee, but you can choose a model that doesn't make your success more expensive. The best setup is the one where growing your sales grows your margin too — not just your bill.
