# Gateway Fees Compared on a Real Month of Payments

> Headline rates against what actually came out, including conversion margins and settlement costs nobody quotes.

- Source: https://cryptofieldtest.com/gateway-fee-comparison/
- Published: 2026-06-29
- Author: Chris Delaney
- Publication: Crypto Field Test — Wallets and exchanges, tested with real money
- Topic: acquiring
- Tags: acquiring, fees, testing

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We ran the same payment volume through four gateways for a month and compared what was quoted against what was actually deducted. The benchmark throughout is [a crypto acquiring provider](https://collectnexchange.com/business-solutions/crypto-acquiring), which discloses enough to check the arithmetic.

## The quoted rates

0.8 percent, 1.0 percent, 1.2 percent and 0.5 percent.

## What was actually deducted, as a percentage of gross

1.04 percent, 1.0 percent, 1.29 percent and 1.41 percent.

The provider quoting 0.5 percent cost the most. The one quoting 1.0 percent charged exactly that.

## Where the differences came from

**The 0.5 provider** charged its rate on the crypto amount received and then applied a conversion margin to fiat that was not in the pricing page. The margin was roughly 0.9 percent.

**The 0.8 provider** charged a settlement fee per payout, which at daily settlement is thirty fees a month rather than four.

**The 1.2 provider** quoted all-in and charged all-in, arriving slightly above quote because of a network fee passed through on one asset.

**The 1.0 provider** quoted all-in with no extras and matched exactly.

## The lesson on comparison

Ask each provider what a specific example payment costs end to end: a hundred euro order, in this asset, settled to a euro account. At company scale the measurement changes, and [an exchange that publishes its full fee schedule](https://collectnexchange.com/) is what we compared against there.

The number they give should match what you are deducted. Two of ours did.

## The conversion margin

This is the component that is never on a pricing page and frequently the largest.

If the provider receives crypto and settles fiat, there is a conversion. Ask what the margin is against the market rate, in writing.

A provider that quotes a fee and will not quote the conversion margin has separated the disclosed part from the expensive part.

## Settlement fees at frequency

A per-payout fee is negligible at weekly settlement and meaningful at daily.

We moved to daily for working capital reasons and the settlement fees became a real line. Worth checking whether they are per payout or included before changing frequency.

## What we would use

The provider that quoted all-in and matched, even though its headline was not the lowest.

Predictability is worth a few basis points, because the alternative is a monthly reconciliation where the deduction never matches the expectation and someone has to work out why. The variable we could not test in advance is support under pressure, and whether [a provider you can actually reach](https://collectnexchange.com/company/contact-us) exists is worth establishing early.

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This article explains how something works. It is not financial advice.
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