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apollo_ | 4 years ago
If you're looking to accept card payments, then no. Both credit and debit cards have interchange fees[0] that are unavoidable. Strong negotiation with a payment provider can land you on an "interchange plus"[1] type fee schedule, which means that they pass through their costs to process the transaction and add some small fixed amount. Note that card interchange fees can range from essentially 0% (debit cards) to >2% fees baked into them. Rewards cards can reach 2.5%+ -- merchants pay for rewards on these cards and eventually pass the cost onto everyone else in the form of higher prices.
Now you could look at using something like ACH to automate bank debits. On paper, this could be as cheap as $0.10/txn. However, there's a litany of new issues to worry about. ACH payments take days to clear. The information needed to debit someone is printed on checks and given out, so now you've got a new authorization problem. People usually solve this with microdeposits or something like Plaid -- you're looking at more time and friction or more cost. People are not trained as well as with cards to punch their bank details into every other website.
Crypto adds a bunch of friction for unsavvy users, has no dispute flow (though I guess that's to your benefit as a merchant), and can have pretty variable costs.
Edit: at the end of the day, checkout completion rate is often more impactful than the fees. Other advice: 1) Try to negotiate with providers. You may not have sufficient leverage until you reach some scale, but it doesn't hurt to ask respectfully. 2) If you plan to grow your business for a long time: create local payments abstractions that make it easier to switch providers or support multiple providers later. Everybody has outages and this increases your negotiating leverage.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee [1] Depending on the card distribution of your users, "interchange plus" can be more costly than a fixed plan.
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