GUIDE

How payment gateway pricing really works

Gateway pricing sold through a partner channel — which describes both NMI and USAePay — almost never has one published number. Here's how to read a quote.

A hand tracing an upward-trending financial growth chart — Buy rate plus markup plus revenue share is where the real number comes from.

Buy rate vs. marked-up rate

A "buy rate" is what the platform charges the partner (an ISO, ISV, or reseller) for gateway services. The partner can mark up fees above that buy rate, and the difference is the partner's margin. When you're quoted a price as an end merchant, you're seeing the marked-up rate, not the buy rate — and two merchants on the identical gateway can pay different amounts because they're placed with different partners.

Revenue share on the processing side

Separate from the gateway fee, processing revenue is often split between the partner's costs and what's charged to the merchant, with the split depending on the partner agreement and volume tier. This is one reason "how much does gateway X cost" doesn't have a single answer — the processing side and the gateway side are priced separately and negotiated separately.

Line items worth asking about

Gateway/transaction fee — a per-transaction or monthly gateway access fee, separate from card-network interchange
Monthly minimum — a minimum fee charged if transaction volume falls below a threshold
PCI compliance fee — sometimes billed annually by the reseller, separate from any PCI validation cost
Batch or settlement fee — charged per daily batch in some setups
Early termination fee — set by the reseller/ISO contract, not the gateway itself
Equipment lease — if a physical terminal is involved, confirm purchase vs. lease terms separately

Why the same gateway can quote differently

Because gateways like NMI and USAePay sell through partners rather than publishing rates, the quote you receive reflects your specific ISO or reseller's markup, volume tier, and negotiated processor rate — not a platform-wide price list. Comparing "NMI pricing" to "USAePay pricing" in the abstract is less useful than comparing two actual quotes for your specific volume and vertical.

Questions to ask any quote

What is the buy rate, and what is the markup, as separate numbers?
Is pricing interchange-plus, tiered, or flat-rate, and which acquirer sets the underlying interchange cost?
What's billed monthly regardless of volume, and what's purely per-transaction?
What triggers an early-termination fee, and how is it calculated?

This is general background on how partner-channel gateway pricing works, not a quote from or endorsement of any specific provider. See our NMI partners and USAePay partners pages for platform-specific detail.