Stripe fees to rise from 10th April

Stripe fees for businesses based in the United Kingdom will be changing on 10 April 2023. In most cases it’s bad news as fees will be rising.

Stripe fees for transactions

Transaction fees for cards will be categorised into multiple regional prices:

• Standard UK cards will change from 1.4% + £0.20 to 1.5% + £0.20.
• Premium UK cards will change from 1.4% + £0.20 to 1.9% + £0.20.
• International cards issued outside the UK and Europe will change from 2.9% + £0.20 to 3.25% + £0.20.
• European cards will remain the same at 2.5% + £0.20.

NB: Stripe defines Standard UK cards as consumer cards issued by Visa and Mastercard and all cards issued by American Express, Discover, Diners Club, Maestro, Cartes Bancaires, UnionPay. Commercial, corporate or business cards issued by Visa and Mastercard are defined as Premium UK cards.

The bad side of this is that you will often have no idea what card a consumer might use prior to the transaction taking place – it may often be a consumer card but if they are buying for business it is more likely to be a corporate card. With this in mind, you probably need to consider building in payment costs for the cards which attract the highest fee percentage.

Stripe Fees for Disputes

• Dispute fees will change from £15 to £20.
• Dispute fees will no longer be refunded.

Due to the costs associated with managing dispute evidence submissions, Stripe say that they will also no longer refund this fee if the customer’s bank resolves the dispute in your favour. This is really bad news for low ASP transactions as it means if a consumer queries a transaction it’s going to cost you £20 whether you win or lose – potentially more than the original profit (or in many cases more than the total transaction) was worth in the first place.

Lower cost Stripe payment alternatives

You can now turn on lower cost payment methods through Checkout or the Payment Element without needing to do any additional engineering work.

• Link, Stripe’s one-click checkout experience, can be used to process all domestic cards for 1.2% + 20p per transaction.
• Bank transfers, commonly used for large, one-off transactions (0.5% per transaction, capped at £5).
• Bacs Direct Debit, commonly used for UK-based recurring payments (1% starting at £0.20, capped at £2).
• SEPA Direct Debit, commonly used for recurring payments (£0.30 per transaction).