Credit card processing

Card processing at
interchange + 2.00% + 30¢.

Accept credit cards, debit cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay through a hosted capture page that keeps card data off your servers — with interchange passed through at network cost, itemized, not blended into a headline rate.

What does credit card processing cost at Paystack?

Paystack charges interchange + 2.00% + $0.30 per card charge. Interchange is the fee the card networks and issuing banks set — it varies by card type and is passed through to you at network cost rather than marked up. That structure is called interchange-plus, and it is the opposite of a blended flat rate, where the processor pockets the difference whenever a transaction happens to carry cheap interchange.

Card rate
interchange + 2.00% + $0.30
Interchange
Passed through at network cost
Wallets
Apple Pay, Google Pay
PCI scope
Hosted capture — typically SAQ A
Stored cards
Tokenized, scoped to your workspace
Cheaper alternative
ACH at $0.75 flat for large or recurring tickets
Capabilities

Everything acceptance needs, and nothing that locks you in.

Hosted capture keeps you out of PCI scope

Redirect to a branded capture page or drop it in an iframe. Card numbers never touch your servers, which keeps most integrations on SAQ A rather than a full audit.

Stored payment methods

Tokenize once, charge later. The token belongs to your workspace, so a repeat customer, a saved card on file, and a subscription renewal are all the same call.

Apple Pay and Google Pay

Native wallet acceptance on the hosted page. Wallets carry device-level authentication, which typically means lower fraud and better authorization rates than a hand-typed PAN.

Cards and ACH behind one ledger

A customer who pays by card in January and by ACH in February is one customer with one payment history. You are not reconciling two processors against one invoice table.

Disputes surfaced as events

Chargebacks and retrieval requests arrive on the same signed webhook stream as everything else, with the original authorization context attached.

Custody on the way through

Card settlement lands in a custody wallet you control before disbursement, so marketplace splits and multi-party payouts do not need a second vendor.

The honest comparison

We will tell you when not to use a card.

Cards are a percentage here too. We are not going to pretend our card rate is a saving — the saving is knowing which transactions belong on which rail, and having both behind one integration so routing is a business rule rather than a migration.

$45 consumer checkout
Card wins

All-in, roughly $2 once typical credit interchange is added. ACH is $0.75 but brings settlement latency and return risk a $45 impulse purchase should not carry. Take the card.

$1,200 monthly subscription
ACH wins

At a typical all-in card rate near 3.8%, that is roughly $46 a month — about $550 a year per subscriber. ACH is $0.75 a month, $9 a year. And ACH has no card expiry, so involuntary churn largely disappears.

$48,000 invoice
ACH, decisively

Roughly $1,800 all-in on a card. $0.75 on ACH. Nothing about that transaction is two thousand times harder on one rail than the other.

FAQ

Credit card processing: common questions

How much does credit card processing cost?

Paystack charges interchange + 2.00% + $0.30 per charge. Interchange — the portion the card networks and issuing banks set — is passed straight through at network cost rather than being marked up or blended into a flat headline rate. A fixed $250/month platform fee applies and is never discounted by volume.

What does "interchange plus" pricing mean?

Interchange-plus separates the two components of a card fee: interchange, which the networks set and no processor controls, and the processor's own margin on top. You see both. Flat-rate pricing such as 2.9% + 30¢ bundles them, which means the processor keeps the difference whenever a transaction carries cheap interchange — a regulated debit card, for instance.

Do I need to be PCI compliant?

Any business accepting cards has PCI obligations, but the scope depends on whether card data reaches your systems. Paystack's hosted capture page and iframe keep the primary account number entirely on our side, which typically qualifies an integration for SAQ A — the shortest self-assessment — instead of a full audit.

Can I store a card and charge it later?

Yes. Cards are tokenized at capture and the token is scoped to your workspace, so subscription renewals, saved cards on file, and repeat checkout are all a charge against a stored payment method. Recurring card charges require the appropriate cardholder agreement at the time of storage.

Should I accept cards or ACH?

Both, routed by ticket size. Cards win on small consumer transactions where conversion and immediacy matter. ACH wins the moment the ticket is large or recurring: at $0.75 flat, a $5,000 invoice costs 75 cents by ACH and roughly $190 all-in by card. Most businesses should keep cards for checkout and move invoices and subscriptions to ACH.

Do you support Apple Pay and Google Pay?

Yes, natively on the hosted capture page. Wallet transactions authenticate at the device level, which generally improves authorization rates and reduces fraud exposure relative to manually entered card numbers.

How are chargebacks handled?

Disputes arrive as HMAC-signed webhook events on the same stream as settlements and returns, carrying the original authorization context. Because card settlement lands in a custody wallet before disbursement, funds you have not yet released are still under your control when a dispute lands.

Next step

Send last month’s statement.

We will separate your interchange from your processor’s margin, line by line, and show you which transactions should stay on cards and which should not.