% Gateway Cost
Whether your checkout costs the going rate, or quietly costs you a point more.
What it means
% Gateway Cost is the share of Total Sales your payment providers keep as processing fees. It covers the percentage rate plus the fixed per-order fee on every card, wallet and pay-later payment, and it's estimated from the rates you enter on Cost Settings rather than read off an invoice. Pay €1,800 in fees on €90,000 of sales and it reads 2%.
Show the math
Formula and a worked example
Gateway Cost is estimated, not invoiced: it applies the percentage rate and the fixed per-order fee you configured on Cost Settings to your real order volume.
Total Sales is everything you took in over the period, including tax and delivery charges.
Worked example. You take 2,000 orders worth €100,000 at a rate of 1.9% plus €0.25 per order. The percentage part is €1,900 and the fixed part is 2,000 × €0.25 = €500. Gateway Cost is €2,400, so % Gateway Cost = 2,400 ÷ 100,000 = 2.4%.
Now halve the basket size. The same €100,000 arrives as 4,000 orders, so the fixed fees double to €1,000 and the total becomes €2,900 — 2.9%. Same provider, same rate, half a point worse, purely because the orders got smaller.
It answers the question
What does it cost you just to get paid? Under 2.5% your checkout sits in the healthy band; past 4% it's worth taking your volume back to your provider.
Why it matters
It's the card machine on your counter. Nobody looks at it, it takes a slice of every sale you ring through, and at the end of the year the slice is a salary.
You can't grow your way out of it either. Double your sales and you double the fee — the percentage stays where it is until you change how you get paid, which makes it one of the few costs where a single negotiation improves Net Profit MarginNet Profit MarginWhat you keep after every cost; the truest read on health.15% or more is healthy on every order that follows. The fixed fee per order is the part people miss: a rounding error on a €200 basket, a real tax on a €15 one.
What good looks like
These bands assume mostly domestic card payments. Cross-border orders, AMEX-heavy customers and pay-later options typically cost more per euro, so an international store sitting at 3% may be doing fine. Like % Shipping Cost% Shipping CostHow much of sales fulfilment eats up.Under 6% is healthy, this is estimated from rates you enter on Cost Settings — a reading near zero means the rates were never filled in.
How to improve it
| Lever | What you do | Expect | How long | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Reorder the payment methods at checkout | Put your lowest-fee option first and stop featuring the expensive wallets at the top | 0.2–0.4 points off | 2–4 weeks | Wallets are the fastest way to check out. Demote them too far and completed orders fall — watch order count, not only the fee. |
| Fast Set a minimum order value | Stop taking €8 orders where the fixed per-order fee alone is over 3% of the sale | 0.1–0.3 points off | 2 weeks | You turn away real customers at the bottom of the range, and some of them were first orders that would have grown. |
| Slow Renegotiate on 12 months of real volume | Take your processed volume to your current provider and one competitor, and ask both for interchange-plus pricing | 0.3–0.8 points off | 1 quarter | Interchange-plus makes your monthly bill move with your card mix. Cheaper on average, harder to forecast. |
| Slow Acquire locally in your biggest market | Process in the local country and currency instead of paying cross-border and conversion fees on every order | 0.4–1 point off on those orders | 1–2 quarters | A migration means freezing the checkout, re-testing every flow, and losing the saved cards and subscriptions tied to the old provider. |
Every lever costs something somewhere. The last column is the one to read twice.
Read it with
Fees follow order count, not revenue. Reading this against Orders is what makes the fixed-fee half of the bill visible.
Growing on the same rate
Revenue grew faster than order count, so the fixed fees spread further. This is the shape you want under any growth month.
More orders, smaller ones
Order count is outrunning revenue, so each order carries the same fixed fee across a thinner basket. Growth that costs more per euro than it used to.
Fewer, bigger orders
Volume fell but the baskets that remain absorb the fixed fee comfortably. The fee line isn't your problem this month.
Paying more for less
Fewer orders and a worse rate at the same time. Either your card mix shifted to expensive methods or your configured rate no longer matches reality.
This pair sizes the leak. If Net Profit Margin fell 2 points and % Gateway Cost rose 0.2, fees explain a tenth of the damage and you should stop looking here. If margin fell 0.3 and fees rose 0.3, you've found the whole cause in one line.
Both come from the same place: rates entered on Cost Settings. Both sitting unusually low at once is the clearest sign you're looking at an unconfigured store rather than a lean one, and every profit figure downstream is flattering you.
Common misreads
This figure is calculated from the rates on Cost Settings, and those default to zero until someone enters them. A reading far below the 2.5% line is usually an empty field, not a good deal — and Net Profit Margin is overstated by exactly the same amount.
Card mix moves this on its own. A strong month from international customers, AMEX holders or pay-later users costs more per euro with no rate change anywhere. Check what people paid with before you send the email.
On €2m of sales, half a point is €10,000 a year that arrives without one extra customer, one extra ad or one extra parcel. It's some of the cheapest margin available to you.
Also called
Payment processing cost · merchant service charge · PSP fees · transaction fee rate
See yoursYour % Gateway Cost for the period, and how it splits country by country.
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