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Many comparisons ask for the average ticket. It matters only when the fee has a fixed part for each payment: with a fee that is only a percentage, a thousand payments of 3 € cost the same as a hundred payments of 30 €.

The cash register offers we read have no fixed fees

In the price lists the calculator uses, the fees on in-person card payments are percentages only:

• SumUp: 1.39% without monthly fee, 0.79% with the subscription for consumer cards [1];
• ready2order readyPay: 1.23%, «without fixed costs» [5];
• orderbird MINI: from 1.09 to 1.49% depending on the pricing model [7];
• PayPal POS: 1.39% for in-person card payments [16].

For these offers the average ticket does not change the cost, and the calculator does not ask for it. PayPal applies a fixed fee only to manually keyed cards, 2.9% plus 0.35 € per payment [16]: a different case from paying with the reader.

When the fixed fee matters

Stripe Terminal, a solution for those who build payments into their own software and not a ready-made cash register, charges 1.4% plus 0.10 € for every payment with cards issued in the EEA [17]. The effective fee is the percentage plus the fixed fee divided by the amount:

With small tickets, such as at a kiosk or a coffee bar, a fixed fee can cost more than the percentage. If your current provider has a fixed fee, compare the effective fee at your average ticket with the percentages of the price lists above, and the total over three years with the calculator.