Credit card, NETS and PayNow fees in Singapore: what small shops pay and how much margin they cost

A small shop in Singapore pays about 0.25% to take PayNow through a bank's QR collection app, 0.8% for NETS on a NETS terminal, and 2.5% or more for credit cards: DBS charges 2.5% for contactless cards taken on an Android phone with its MAX app, HitPay 2.5% + S$0.50, and NETS up to 3.5% on its card terminals. PayNow's rules ban surcharges, and Visa's rules and NETS's merchant agreement forbid card surcharges, so the fees come out of your gross profit. On a S$20 item that cost you S$12, a 2.5% card fee takes 50 cents of your S$8 margin, or 6.25% of it; PayNow at 0.25% takes 5 cents.

The rest of this guide uses the same numbers to show what each way of paying costs, what GST does to the fee, what a month of fees adds up to, why your payouts don't match your takings, and how to find the rate you're really paying.

What does each way of paying cost a small shop in Singapore?

These are the rates providers published as of October 2026. Card rates on a bank terminal from DBS, OCBC or UOB are set in your merchant agreement and mostly aren't published, so your contract and statements are what count. On an SGQR label, each payment scheme on the label carries its own rate.

Terminal rental is part of the cost too. NETS's terminal with card acceptance is S$50 a month plus the S$10 telco charge, which on S$10,000 a month of NETS and card sales adds 0.6%.

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 S$20 that costs you S$12. Your gross profit is S$8, 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 minimart working on a 20% margin gives up an eighth of its gross profit to a 2.5% card fee, and only 1.3% of it to PayNow at 0.25%. A gift shop or boutique on 50% to 60% feels less than half of that.

A fixed fee per payment weighs most on small sales. HitPay's 2.5% + S$0.50 is 12.5% of a S$5 sale but 3.5% of a S$50 one. If most of your sales are small, compare providers at your average sale, not the headline percentage.

If you're GST-registered, the fee is charged on the GST too

A percentage fee applies to the whole payment, and that includes the GST. You pass the GST on to IRAS, but the fee on it is yours to pay.

At 9% GST, the S$20 item rings up at S$21.80. A 2.5% card fee on that is about 55 cents, which is 2.73% of the S$20 you keep and 6.8% of your S$8 margin rather than 6.25%. To get the real cost, multiply your rate by 1.09. Any GST charged on the fee itself you claim back as input tax.

What a month of fees looks like

A month of fees isn't one rate times your takings. Each way of paying has its own price, cash costs nothing, and cards cost ten times what PayNow does. Here's a shop that isn't GST-registered and takes S$30,000 in a month:

Cards are 40% of this shop's takings but about three-quarters of its fees. PayNow is almost a quarter of its takings and about 4% of its fees. The month costs S$393.50, about S$4,720 a year or 1.3% of takings, before terminal rental. Put in your own takings and rates to get your number.

Why your payouts don't match your takings

Your POS records what the customer paid. What reaches your bank account follows each provider's rules, so the two rarely line up day by day.

• 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 between cash, PayNow and cards, and you can see what the fees cost.
• Payouts take time. NETS pays sales into your bank account the next working day. HitPay pays out card sales from the next business day, and puts PayNow into your HitPay balance the next calendar day. OCBC OneCollect credits PayNow instantly and other QR payments within two working days.
• Fees come off at different times. HitPay pays out net of its fee, so a S$100 card payment arrives as S$97. OCBC OneCollect deducts its PayNow fee once a month and its fee on other QR payments daily.
• A refund doesn't give the fee back. HitPay keeps the fee on the original payment, though it charges nothing extra for the refund, and Stripe keeps its fee too. For NETS and bank plans, check your merchant agreement.
• Disputes cost extra at Stripe: S$15 for each one you receive, and another S$15 if you contest it yourself (refunded if you win). HitPay deducts a chargeback fee and credits it back if the dispute goes your way.

Can you add a surcharge for PayNow or card payments?

Not for PayNow. Under the Association of Banks in Singapore's rules, merchants may not add any surcharge to PayNow payments or charge PayNow customers more than customers who pay another way, and no merchant is exempt. A shop caught doing it can have its PayNow service suspended or cancelled by its bank.

For cards, not under the rules you signed up to. Visa's rules forbid adding anything to the normal price for paying by card unless local law expressly requires that merchants be allowed to surcharge, and we found no Singapore law that does. NETS's merchant agreement forbids surcharges on NETS and on the cards NETS acquires itself, unless NETS approves the fee; cards acquired by DBS, OCBC or UOB on a NETS terminal follow that bank's agreement. Visa and NETS also rule out a minimum spend for card payments, so a "cards for S$10 and above" sign breaks them.

Some agreements go further. NETS's also bars you from promoting other ways of paying more actively than the cards it covers, so read yours before you put up a sign asking customers to use PayNow. And a charge every customer has to pay, such as a service charge, belongs in the price you display: CCCS's price transparency guidelines expect it in the headline price, and accept a clear, prominent notice beside the price only when the charge can't be worked out in advance.

That leaves your prices as the place to recover payment costs. If cards are 40% of your takings at 2.5%, card fees cost 1% of takings, so prices 1% 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 cards at 2.5% on a 40% margin, that's 6.25%. If more than about one card customer in 16 would walk out or buy less without cards, accepting them pays for itself. With cards the most-used way to pay in Singapore, that's an easy call. A fixed fee changes the sums on small sales: at HitPay's 2.5% + S$0.50, the S$20 sale costs S$1, or 5%, so one card sale in eight has to be extra business.

Overseas QR wallets at 1.8% need 4.5% of those sales to depend on you taking them. A tourist who only carries Alipay+ or WeChat Pay has no other way to pay you, so for a shop on a tourist route that's an easy call too.

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

Your provider's monthly statement or settlement report has the real number: divide the month's fees, terminal rental included, by your takings for each payment method. That's your effective rate. Do it for each method and you'll see which costs you most.

Then compare, and check what happens when a promotion ends. DBS's six-month and OCBC's three-month PayNow waivers end on a set date, and the 0.25% applies after that. Bank card rates are negotiated, so ask for a quote in writing and check whether it covers American Express and overseas cards. HitPay offers custom pricing once your average monthly volume over the last six months tops S$50,000.

Let your POS do the sums

We found no Singapore rule that requires a certified cash register, so the POS you use is your choice. IRAS does expect records of your sales, such as cash register tapes, a daily sales book and invoices, kept for five years. If you're GST-registered, check where you stand on InvoiceNow: new voluntary GST registrants have had to send their invoice data to IRAS through an InvoiceNow-Ready Solution since 1 April 2026, and every other GST-registered business follows between 1 April 2028 and 1 April 2031, depending on its size. Sales rung up on a POS need no e-invoice for the customer and can be sent as totals. DingPOS is not an InvoiceNow-Ready Solution and doesn't send anything to IRAS, so use it alongside the solution that does, such as your accounting software.

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. Add PayNow, NETS and cards as separate methods, so cheap payments stay cheap in your numbers (for cards on HitPay, 2.5% and S$0.50). If your provider adds GST you can't claim back, include it: for a 0.8% fee plus GST, enter 0.87%. If your provider keeps its fee on refunds, as HitPay and Stripe 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.