Credit card processing fees in Canada: what small shops pay and how much margin they take

Square and Moneris, two of the providers that publish flat rates in Canada, charge 2.5% and 2.65% + 10¢ on every credit card payment, Amex included. Interac debit costs far less: a flat 12¢ a payment on Moneris Flat Rate, 9¢ to 12.5¢ at Helcim, or 0.75% + 7¢ at Square. Either way the fee comes out of your gross profit, not your sales: on a $40 item that cost you $24, a 2.5% credit card fee takes $1 of your $16 margin, or 6.25% of it, while a 12¢ debit tap takes less than 1%.

The rest of this guide uses the same numbers to show what each way of paying costs, what a month of fees adds up to, why your deposits come in under your sales, whether you can pass the fee on, and how to find the rate you're really paying.

What do card payments cost a small shop in Canada?

These are the rates providers published as of October 2026. Flat-rate plans charge one price for every credit card. Interchange-plus plans pass on what the card networks charge for each card type and add the provider's margin, so premium and rewards cards cost more. Bank and custom contracts aren't published; your merchant agreement and statements are what count.

The terminal is part of the cost too. Moneris rents its Go terminal from $34.95 a month, which adds about 0.35% on $10,000 of card sales. Helcim sells its card reader for $239 and its Smart Terminal for $429 instead of renting them.

Processing fees come out of your margin, not your sales

A 2.5% fee sounds small because it's measured against the sale. But your shop runs on what's left after the cost of the goods, and that's where the fee comes from.

Take an item you sell for $40 before tax that costs you $24. Your gross profit is $16, a 40% margin:

The last row comes from one formula: fee as a share of gross profit = fee rate ÷ gross margin. Here that's 2.5% ÷ 40% = 6.25%. The thinner your margin, the bigger the bite:

A convenience store working on a 20% margin gives up an eighth of its gross profit to a 2.5% credit card fee. A gift shop or clothing store on 50% to 60% feels less than half of that.

Fixed fees weigh most on small sales. A 12¢ debit fee is 2.4% of a $5 coffee but 0.3% of a $40 sale. Square's 0.75% + 7¢ works the other way: it's cheaper than a flat 12¢ below about $6.67 and costs more above that, so on a $40 sale it's 37¢. If most of your payments are debit, the debit price matters more than the headline credit rate.

Your fee is charged on the sales tax too

A percentage fee applies to the whole card payment, and that includes the sales tax. Square's help centre spells it out: its fee is taken from the total, tax and tip included. You pass the GST, HST or PST on to the government, but the fee on it is yours to pay.

In Ontario, with 13% HST, the $40 item rings up at $45.20. A 2.5% fee on that is $1.13, which is 2.83% of the $40 you keep, and about 7.1% of your $16 margin rather than 6.25%. To get the real cost, multiply your rate by 1 plus your sales tax rate: 2.5% × 1.13 in Ontario.

What a month of fees looks like

A month of fees isn't one rate times your sales. Each payment method has its own price, cash costs nothing, and credit cards cost far more than debit. Here's one month at an Ontario shop, priced on two flat-rate plans:

Credit cards are half this shop's sales but about three-quarters of its fees on Square, and more than four-fifths on Moneris. Moneris's 12¢ debit saves $70 a month here, but its higher credit rate and the terminal rental cost more than that. A shop that takes more debit and less credit could come out the other way. On Square, this shop pays about $5,900 a year: 1.6% of what customers paid, or about 1.9% of its sales before HST. Put in your own sales and rates to get your number.

Why your deposits are smaller than your sales

Your POS records what the customer paid. Your provider deposits what's left after its fee, or deposits the full amount and takes the fees separately, so your bank statement never matches your sales, and the gap is your processing fees.

• Record sales at the full amount the customer paid, and record processing fees as a separate expense. Your sales figures then stay right when customers switch from cash to cards, and you can see what the fees cost.
• Square takes its fees out before it pays you, and deposits arrive as soon as the next business day (or within minutes with Instant Transfer, for 1.95% of the amount). On gross deposits (it offers gross or net), Helcim deposits your full sales and takes its fees as a separate line the same day; card sales usually arrive in one to two business days, or the next business day if you bank with a major Canadian bank that supports Interac e-Transfer and you close a batch of up to $25,000 by 7 pm MT. Moneris offers RBC business clients next-day deposits, seven days a week.
• A refund doesn't give the fee back. Square has kept its processing fee on refunded payments since June 2023, and Helcim keeps the fee on the original payment too, though it charges nothing extra for the refund. At Helcim, voiding a payment before the batch closes costs nothing.
• Disputes: Square charges no chargeback fee. Helcim charges $15, refunded if the chargeback is resolved in your favour.

Can you add a surcharge for credit card payments?

Outside Quebec, yes, on credit cards only, within each card network's rules (Visa's took effect on October 6, 2022). The surcharge can't be more than 2.4% or more than what the card actually costs you to accept, whichever is lower. Visa requires 30 days' written notice to your provider before you start, and you must show the surcharge at the store entrance, at the till and on the receipt. The customer must be able to cancel and pay another way, and a refund must include the surcharge.

Debit is a different story. Visa forbids surcharges on Visa Debit and prepaid cards. For Interac debit, the FCAC tells merchants to ask their processor, since some networks don't allow it, so assume no until yours says otherwise. In Quebec, the Consumer Protection Act bans any fee for paying by debit or credit card, and a sign at the till doesn't make it legal.

A surcharge shown and charged separately from the price is treated as an exempt financial service, so you don't charge GST/HST on it. You can also offer a discount for paying by cash or debit instead; the Code of Conduct for the Payment Card Industry allows it.

The other option is to build the cost into your prices. If credit cards are half of what customers pay and cost 2.5%, the fees come to about 1.25% of your takings. Because the fee is charged on the tax too, that's about 1.4% of your pre-tax prices in Ontario (0.5 × 2.5% × 1.13), so prices about 1.4% higher cover them.

Is a payment method worth accepting? Work out the break-even

A payment method costs you its fee and earns you the sales you'd lose without it. The break-even uses the same formula: the share of that method's sales that must be extra business = fee rate ÷ gross margin.

For credit cards at 2.5% on a 40% margin, that's 6.25%, or about 7.1% once Ontario's HST is counted (2.5% × 1.13 ÷ 40%). So turning credit cards away only saves money if fewer than about one credit customer in 14 would leave or spend less. With credit cards making up 43% of all payments, and rewards the top reason Canadians give for using them, that's a risky bet.

If you're weighing Amex: on Square and Moneris Flat Rate it costs the same as any other card, so there's nothing to decide. On Helcim's interchange-plus pricing, a $40 Amex sale costs $1.01 (2.19% + 13¢): more than a basic Visa ($0.78) and less than a Visa Privilege ($1.11). A customer you turn away usually has another credit card, so what Amex really costs you is the difference from that card, and the break-even is far lower than one sale in 14.

How do you find the rate you're really paying?

Your monthly statement has the real number: divide the month's fees, terminal rental included, by your card sales. That's your effective rate. If your statement splits fees by card type, do it for each one and you'll see which costs you most. Under the Code of Conduct, your provider also has to give you a fee disclosure that lists its rates.

Then check whether you're getting the small-business rates. Under an agreement with the federal government, from October 19, 2024, Visa and Mastercard cut interchange on in-store consumer credit card payments at qualifying small businesses to an annual weighted average of 0.95%. Mastercard's threshold is $175,000 a year in Mastercard sales. Visa's rose from $300,000 to $750,000 in Visa sales on October 24, 2026. On interchange-plus, those lower rates flow through to you. On a flat rate, your price stays the same whatever the interchange. Your processor must tell you if it isn't passing a network fee cut on in full, and remind you that you can end the contract.

Costs can go up too. Mastercard expanded its 1.8-US-cent network fee to every domestic transaction in October 2026, and Visa plans to charge the same from April 2027. The networks bill processors, and processors usually pass these fees on, so compare a few statements before and after.

Let your POS do the math

Outside Quebec's restaurant and passenger-transport sectors, we found no Canadian rule that requires a certified cash register, so for a retail shop the POS is your choice. What the CRA does require is records you can produce, kept for six years after the end of the year they relate to (electronic records in a readable format), and software that hides or deletes sales has been illegal since 2014. Quebec is the exception for food service: QST-registered restaurants, bars, caterers and other businesses Revenu Québec counts as restaurant establishments must record every sale in a certified sales recording system (SRS) linked to its WEB-SRM, and give every customer a bill from it. DingPOS is not a certified SRS. If those rules cover you, ring up sales on your certified system; DingPOS can run alongside it to track payment methods and estimate fees and margins, but it doesn't replace it.

If you run your counter on an iPad, DingPOS can estimate the fees for you. In Settings → Payment Methods, give each payment method its processing fee: a percentage, a fixed amount per transaction, or both (for Interac debit on Moneris Flat Rate, just $0.12; at Square, 0.75% and $0.07). Card processing fees generally carry no GST/HST, so enter the rate as your provider quotes it. If your provider keeps its fee on refunds, as Square and Helcim do, turn off “Percentage fee returned on refunds”. The Payment Methods card on Stats then shows the estimated fee and net received for each method. DingPOS doesn't process payments or read your provider's statements, so these figures are estimates from the rates you enter, and your statement shows the actual amount.

Setup is covered in Can DingPOS track card and mobile payment fees?. Fee tracking is on the Standard plan and up (compare them on Pricing), and you can try everything free for 30 days.