Short answer
Platforms on Stripe Connect pay card processing plus Connect fees: $2 per monthly active account, plus 0.25% + 25¢ per payout when the platform sets its users' pricing. At tens of millions in volume, those fees and the card pricing underneath are worth reviewing. The alternatives are better-priced Connect-style setups, payfac-as-a-service, or becoming a payment facilitator, each trading margin against work.
What Stripe Connect costs at scale
Stripe offers two Connect models. When Stripe sets the processing price for your users, Connect is included in the standard fee. When your platform sets the price, so you can charge your own rates and keep the difference, Stripe adds platform fees: $2 per monthly active account, plus 0.25% + 25¢ per payout.
An example: a platform with $50,000,000 a year in card volume, a $80 average payment and 2,000 active users, each paid out 4 times a month.
| Card processing at 2.9% + 30¢ | $1,637,500 |
|---|---|
| Active account fees (2,000 × $2 × 12) | $48,000 |
| Payout fees (96,000 payouts) | $144,906 |
| Total | $1,830,406 |
Stripe fees verified on against stripe.com/pricing. How we check
Before international cards, currency conversion, disputes or Instant Payouts. The Connect fees alone are $192,906 a year in this example, and the card processing underneath is priced at the flat rate, so every debit and standard credit card costs as much as a premium card.
Monetizing payments
Many platforms earn a meaningful share of revenue from payments. The model is simple: you charge your users a processing price and pay your provider less. The spread is revenue. Three things decide how big it is:
- Your cost. On interchange-plus pricing you pay the real cost of each card plus a markup; on a flat rate the provider keeps the difference between cheap and expensive cards.
- Your price to users. Most platforms charge a simple flat rate. Users value the simplicity, and you capture the gap on low-cost cards.
- Platform fees. Per-account and per-payout charges come straight out of the spread.
Payfac vs payfac-as-a-service vs Connect
| Stay on Connect | Payfac-as-a-service | Become a payfac | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Control of pricing | Yes, when you set pricing | Yes | Full |
| Share of payments margin | Lowest | Middle | Highest |
| Onboarding and risk work | Provider does most | Shared | You do it |
| Compliance and registration | Provider | Mostly provider | You (registration, audits, PCI) |
| Typical fit | Early and mid-size platforms | Growing platforms that want margin without a payments team | Large platforms with payments expertise |
A payment facilitator onboards users as sub-merchants under its own merchant account. It earns the most but carries the losses when a user's customers dispute payments or a user disappears. Most platforms start to compare these options once volume through the platform reaches tens of millions a year.
What to compare
- All-in cost per dollar processed, including platform, account and payout fees, not just the card rate.
- Who carries loss risk when a user's customers dispute payments.
- Onboarding experience: how fast a new user can take payments, and how much of it you control.
- Payout options: speed, cost, currencies and cross-border payouts.
- Migration: whether stored cards and connected accounts can move, and how. See how to switch from Stripe.
- Reporting for your finance team and for your users.
If your users are businesses paying large invoices, the card mix matters too: see card processing costs for B2B SaaS and Level 2 and 3 processing.