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Your real card mix, your real rate, and the annual difference — including where we are not cheaper.
Most savings calculators compare two headline rates and stop. That is fine when both providers price every card identically, and misleading when they do not — so this one asks for your card mix and tells you the point at which the answer flips. It compares against Stripe's published 2.9% + 30¢, the most widely used reference rate.
Paydude surcharges Amex at +0.3%
Excluding Amex, counted above
Stripe surcharges these; Paydude does not
Take these shares from a real statement rather than estimating. Card mix moves the answer more than the headline rate does, which is the entire reason this calculator asks for it.
Paydude is cheaper here at any card mix — even if every single transaction were on a surcharged card, the base rate difference would still cover it.
Annual saving at other Amex + premium shares
Excludes chargeback and dispute fees, where Paydude charges $12 against a $15–$25 norm. Those depend on your dispute rate rather than your volume, so they are left out of the comparison above.
Two providers can advertise rates a few basis points apart and cost very different amounts, because what they surcharge differs. A comparison that ignores this is comfortable to publish and easy for a prospect to disprove with one statement.
| Card type | Paydude | Typical flat-rate provider |
|---|---|---|
| Base rate | 2.6% + 25¢, improving with volume | 2.9% + 30¢ |
| Premium, corporate or business | +0.3% | No surcharge |
| American Express | +0.3% | No surcharge |
| Issued outside your country | No surcharge | +1–1.5% |
| Currency conversion | Not surcharged separately | Commonly +1% |
| Monthly platform fee | $0 | $0 |
Read that table honestly and it says two things. If a large share of your volume is Amex or corporate cards, our advantage narrows. If a meaningful share is international, it widens considerably.
The calculator reports the break-even surcharged share — the point at which the +0.3% on Amex and premium cards cancels out the lower base rate. Compare that against the real figure on your own statement.
Each of those runs in our favour, so the figure above is the conservative version.
Pricing moves to interchange plus 0.2% + 25¢ rather than a blended flat rate. The calculator still models the Scale flat rate at those volumes, so the real figure is usually better than shown — see what is interchange-plus pricing.
GOOD QUESTIONS
No, and the calculator will tell you when it is not. Paydude surcharges premium, corporate, business and American Express cards at +0.3%. A merchant with a high share of those and little international volume may pay less elsewhere. For most card mixes the lower base rate and the absence of an international surcharge more than cover it.
Because American Express interchange is genuinely more expensive to accept, and Paydude passes that through as a stated surcharge rather than blending it into a higher base rate everyone pays. The trade is that merchants with little Amex volume stop subsidising those with a lot.
There is no Paydude surcharge on cards issued abroad, where most flat-rate providers add 1–1.5% plus around 1% for currency conversion. For a business with meaningful overseas volume that is usually the largest single line in the comparison.
Take them from a statement rather than estimating. Most processors break volume down by card type and issuing region. Estimates tend to understate Amex and premium share, which makes the result look better than it is.