Gateway Fees Compared on a Real Month of Payments

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, 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 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 exists is worth establishing early.