Agentis analysis of Stripe's and PayPal's own published 2026 pricing pages shows PayPal Checkout costs 3.49% + $0.49 per transaction versus Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30. Merchants absorb that difference silently when checkout offers both without weighting the true blended cost by payment-method mix.
The remainder is assumed to run through Stripe/Shopify Payments' card rate.
Your Blended Effective Rate
3.63%
Blended Cost Per Order
$2.36
Total Monthly Processing Cost
$2,357.05
| Method | Rate |
|---|---|
| Stripe (cards/wallets) | 2.9% + $0.30 |
| Shopify Payments: Basic plan | 2.9% + $0.30 |
| Shopify Payments: Shopify/Grow plan | 2.7% + $0.30 |
| Shopify Payments: Advanced plan | 2.5% + $0.30 |
| PayPal Checkout | 3.49% + $0.49 |
Sources: Stripe: Pricing (retrieved August 7, 2026); Shopify: Pricing (retrieved August 7, 2026); PayPal: Merchant Fees (retrieved August 7, 2026). Standard (non-enterprise, non-negotiated) US online rates. PayPal's standard rate does not vary by volume tier the way card-processor plans do.
| % via PayPal | Blended Effective Rate | Blended Cost Per Order |
|---|---|---|
| 0% | 3.36% | $2.19 |
| 10% | 3.44% | $2.24 |
| 25% | 3.57% | $2.32 |
| 50% | 3.77% | $2.45 |
| 75% | 3.98% | $2.59 |
| 100% | 4.18% | $2.72 |
Sources: Stripe: Pricing (retrieved August 7, 2026); PayPal: Merchant Fees (retrieved August 7, 2026). Agentis synthesis: Stripe's and PayPal's published rates weighted by PayPal mix % at a fixed $65 average order value. Not a rate either processor publishes directly.
How we calculate this
Per-transaction rates are pulled directly from Stripe's, Shopify's, and PayPal's own current pricing pages. The blended rate is Agentis's own synthesis, a mix-weighted average, not a rate any single processor publishes. We checked but couldn't include BNPL providers (Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay): none publish a standard merchant fee. Read our full methodology →
Expert Insight
Merchants price-shop their primary processor, then forget that every payment method they add to checkout, PayPal, Shop Pay, whatever else, carries its own rate. A 30% PayPal mix at a normal order value pushes your blended effective rate up by roughly half a point versus running everything through your primary card processor. That's not a rounding error at scale. On meaningful monthly volume it's a real annual difference most finance teams never isolate, because the P&L shows one blended 'payment processing fees' line, not a mix-weighted breakdown by method.
Herzel Mishel, CEO & Co-Founder →PayPal's published Checkout rate (3.49% + $0.49) is higher than Stripe's or Shopify Payments' card rates because it bundles buyer/seller protection and PayPal's own risk model into one flat published rate, rather than the interchange-plus-markup structure card processors use. Whether that premium is worth it depends on how much PayPal lifts conversion for your specific checkout. This page doesn't attempt to answer that with public data. For comparison, Stripe's published card rate is 2.9% + $0.30, and Shopify Payments ranges from 2.9% + $0.30 on the Basic plan to 2.5% + $0.30 on Advanced. PayPal's standard rate also does not fall with volume the way card-processor plans do. The mix is what drives your real cost: at a $65 average order, a 0% PayPal mix produces a 3.36% blended effective rate, 50% produces 3.77%, and 100% produces 4.18%. To see your own number, weight each processor's published rate by the share of orders that actually run through it.
Agentis analysis of Shopify Payments' and Stripe's published 2026 fee schedules shows every chargeback carries a fixed $15 dispute fee. Lose the dispute, and the full order value gets reversed on top of it. Industry-reported win rates put the odds of getting that money back at under 44%, per Chargebacks911's 2026 data.
Agentis analysis of Stripe's own refund documentation shows a fully refunded charge can't be disputed at all, while Stripe's processing fee is never returned either way. Refunding a $60 order costs the $2.04 processing fee you already paid. Losing that same order to a chargeback costs $75, the order value plus a $15 dispute fee.
Agentis analysis of Stripe's, Shopify's, and PayPal's own published fee terms shows currency conversion costs 1% with Stripe, 1.5% to 2% with Shopify Payments (Shopify's own example uses 1.5%), and 3% to 4% with PayPal, a gap of up to $30 more per $1,000 in international sales between Stripe's rate and PayPal's on a standard goods-and-services transaction.
Agentis analysis of Stripe's own published pricing confirms ACH bank transfers cost 0.8% capped at $5.00, while card payments cost 2.9% plus $0.30, with no cap at all. On a $2,000 order, that's $5.00 for ACH versus $58.30 for a card, a $53.30 difference that gets larger, not smaller, as the order value climbs.
Agentis finds margin leaks automatically.
Data last updated August 7, 2026. Browse all Payment Fees pages →