Calculator for PayPal Merchant Fees

Like every other payment processor, PayPal levies a little transaction fee. You may use this calculator to see exactly how much of any sum PayPal will deduct.

Understanding PayPal Fees Will Help You Properly Price Your Products

How much profit you have left over depends on the cost of your goods and the price you charge for them. This data is essential to your financial situation. However, a lot of online retailers overlook the charge PayPal assesses on each transaction. You should be aware of this cost if you're using a PayPal Shopping Cart so you may, if required, slightly increase your pricing to keep your spending within your means. Since it might be challenging to determine because PayPal's transaction charge is percentage-based, Shift4Shop has developed the useful PayPal Fee Calculator below. The calculator will handle the rest after you enter the amount.

What Circumstances Cause Sellers to Pay Fees?

Customers choose PayPal because there are no additional fees associated with using this payment processor to make transactions. The same does not hold true for PayPal-using merchants, though. They will be assessed a fee if they make any profit from a sale made through the shopping cart. This is the cost of using the program during the checkout process.

Before continuing, it is important to note that companies must pay a regular domestic merchant charge of 2.9% of the payment plus 30 cents for each transaction in order to utilize the PayPal Shopping Cart. In this context, "standard" refers to a scenario in which an American-based vendor accepts an online payment from an American-based buyer who uses an American credit card and pays with an American dollar.

Even if it seems quite ordinary, not every eCommerce purchase may be for your company. What happens, for instance, if the scenario we just described is the exact same, with the exception that the buyer is making their purchase from outside of the United States? As an alternative, what happens if the company is situated abroad? These payments may be processed very differently from payments made by two parties inside the same nation.

As you can anticipate, these foreign transactions could also need for currency conversion. Perhaps British pounds, Mexican pesos, or Japanese yen are being utilized instead of the American dollar as the unit of currency. The exchange of currencies is now further complicated, and the processor will also have to handle this task on top of their other responsibilities. (Note: You may view PayPal's list of fixed fees here. If your company is headquartered outside of the United States, please replace any references to "30 cents" with the comparable amount in your local currency.)

PayPal has regulations codifying the imposition of additional fees for just about any case that deviates from that assumption since all of these transactions require different processing than the transactions that satisfy the criteria of "standard."

Different PayPal Fees

As you can see, the costs you must pay might vary depending on the specifics of the transaction, and there are a variety of specifics that can impact how much you must spend. In accordance with PayPal's policies, five consecutive transactions for the same item may each incur a different fee.

You should be aware of the many sorts of fees that PayPal may charge you now that you are better informed about the various circumstances that might influence how much you have to pay. Knowing the precise figures might help you get ready for the time when you must pay the expenses associated with using this shopping cart. It could also make it clearer to you how our PayPal fee estimator comes to its findings. Let's dissect each category for you:

Domestic Standard Merchant Fee

As we previously stated, this is the amount you pay if you receive a payment from a person who resides in the same nation as your company. It will be 2.9% of the amount you get plus 30 cents (or, if the nation in question is not the United States, the corresponding "fixed charge" that PayPal provides for your currency). Not much else needs to be said about this.

International Transaction Merchant Fees

The intriguing part begins here. You will be charged 4.4% of the money your client sends you if your company is headquartered in one nation and your consumer is based in another. You will also need to provide the set charge, especially the one for the nation from which your consumer is making their purchase, as with all other transactions.

For instance, you would pay 20 pence instead of 30 cents if your company is registered in the United States but the client is registered in the United Kingdom. For your consumers in Mexico and Japan, PayPal would impose a flat fee of four pesos and forty ¥, respectively.

Fee for currency exchange

This brings up the cost of exchanging these pounds, pesos, and yen for dollars, or vice versa, or for a different currency pair. Due of the fluctuating nature of the prices, there is no set cost for this service. Instead, the cost of currency translation fluctuates often, just like it does at banks and exchange bureaus.

Methods to Reduce PayPal Fees

Retail Prices

As we previously said, the usual cost for each PayPal transaction is 2.9% + 30 cents. This may appear substantial enough as is. However, if your company expands significantly and routinely handles a dizzying volume of transactions, it could start to feel even more taxing.

If this turns out to be the case, you can apply to PayPal for Merchant Rates, a program that allows them to provide you a discounted rate on the fees you must pay.

Depending on how much money you make in a month, they may reduce the percentage by a certain amount. For the sake of clarification, assume that your sales go beyond $3000 but stay under $10,000 before the month is through. In this case, the transactions you receive will instead charge 2.5%, however each transaction will still include a 30-cent surcharge.

Let's assume that your continuous monthly sales total consistently exceeds $10,000. The percentage is then immediately reduced even more to 2.2% of the buying price (plus, you guessed it, 30 cents per transaction). These tenths of a percent might not seem to have an impact on your monthly payment. Despite the appearance, they can have a significant impact on how much money you save.

Not every online store will be eligible for Merchant Rates. Make sure you do not have a negative balance with this firm if you wish to apply for this discount. Furthermore, you need to have been open for more than 30 days. Finally, you must continuously generate more than $3000 through PayPal each month. You run the risk of losing PayPal's confidence and, as a result, losing that status and that rate decrease if sales drop below that level.

Micropayments

The "set fee" associated with PayPal is something to keep in mind since regardless of whether you sell low-cost goods or high-end goods, you will still be required to pay 2.9% of the money you make from the transaction. Adding 30 cents to charges for things costing $2.00 is different from doing it for items costing $200. The standard charge might significantly reduce your earnings if you sell a large portion of your product for low prices.

You can apply for a PayPal micropayments program if your company, on average, generates less than $10 from all of its sales. You would be required to pay a substantially larger proportion of each transaction under this system: 5%. Though the fixed price would be completely eliminated, you would still save money on each transaction compared to using the usual merchant fee.

PayPal alternatives for online sales

For a variety of reasons, PayPal is highly well-liked, but not all companies can or want to budget for these costs. Since we are aware of this, we don't limit our customers to PayPal as a payment method. Shift4 Payments, a market-leading payment processor that enables you to directly take credit cards as well as a number of alternative payment methods, powers Shift4Shop. Shift4Shop may also link your online business to a broad range of alternative payment options, such as digital wallets, bitcoin, "buy now, pay later" consumer financing, foreign payments, and many more. You have the discretion to choose whether to include PayPal into your checkout using our software.