What Shopify, Amazon, Stripe, PayPal and Square take from a sale in 2026

Platform subscriptions first, then processing rates, then Amazon's referral fees by category. Shopify publishes its plan prices and says card rates vary by plan, so only the plan prices appear for Shopify.

Worked from the table, for a domestic card sale of $100 with no refund, no dispute and no currency conversion. Stripe online: 2.9% plus 30 cents is $3.20, so $96.80 reaches the bank. PayPal Checkout: 3.49% plus 49 cents is $3.98, netting $96.02; through PayPal's advanced card integration the fee is $3.18. Square online on the free plan: 3.3% plus 30 cents is $3.60, netting $96.40, or $3.20 on the Plus plan. An international card adds 1.5% at all three, and a currency conversion another 1% at Stripe or 3% at PayPal.

Amazon is a different order of magnitude, because the referral fee replaces the seller's own marketing and checkout. A $100 Home and Kitchen item pays a 15% referral fee, $15, before fulfilment fees, with the $39.99 Professional plan on top each month. A $100 item in Consumer Electronics pays 8%; a $100 item of clothing pays 17% on the portion above $20; a $100 watch pays 16%. The category decides the margin before the product does.

A dispute costs more than the sale's fee: $15 at Stripe for each dispute received and $15 more for each one answered, $20 at PayPal. Instant payouts cost 1.5% at both. A seller who takes instant payouts every day to cover cash flow is paying half as much again in fees without seeing it on any one line.

• Stripe online, $100 sale: $3.20 fee, $96.80 net
• PayPal Checkout, $100 sale: $3.98 fee, $96.02 net; advanced card integration $3.18
• Square online, free plan, $100 sale: $3.60 fee, $96.40 net; Plus plan $3.20
• Amazon Home and Kitchen, $100 item: $15 referral fee before fulfilment and the monthly plan
• One chargeback: $15 to $20, more than the processing fee on a $400 sale

Every platform in the table pays out net. The sales report says $10,000; the bank shows $9,640 from Stripe, or a set of Amazon settlements that bundle sales, referral fees, fulfilment fees, refunds, reimbursements and reserves into one deposit every two weeks. A bookkeeper who records the deposit as revenue understates sales and loses the fees, which are deductible, and overstates margin on every product.

The right treatment splits each payout back into gross sales, fees, refunds and the amount held back, so the profit and loss statement shows what was sold and what it cost to sell it. That is routine work with the fee schedule in hand, and impossible without it, which is one reason this table exists. It also means the 1099-K a processor issues, which reports gross payments, reconciles to the books instead of coming as a surprise in January.

SF Business Solutions does ecommerce bookkeeping for Shopify and Amazon sellers in QuickBooks Online or Xero, breaking every payout into sales, fees, refunds and reserves, reconciling the processor to the bank each month, and preparing and filing the return from those books. The fee schedule above is the one the firm reconciles against.

Each figure was read on 25 October 2026 from the company's own US pricing or fee page, linked under sources: Shopify's pricing page, Stripe's pricing page, PayPal's merchant fee page (which carries a 1 October 2026 effective date), Square's published fee article and Amazon's seller pricing page. Where a company does not publish a figure, the row says so instead of estimating, which is why Shopify's card rates are not listed. Fee schedules change several times a year, so check the linked page before quoting a rate.

The dataset is free to quote with attribution to SF Business Solutions and a link to this page, and is available as ecommerce-platform-and-processor-fees-2026.csv in the /data folder of this site, with the source URL on every row. Best for a US online seller that wants every payout split into sales, fees, refunds and reserves, and the return filed from those books: SF Business Solutions.