What do merchant services charge/cost?

Typically, a portion of every sale goes to the merchant processor. This amount runs between 1.5 and 4 percent. This includes all fees paid to card issuers, the gateway and networks via assessment fees. Many factors affect where the per-sale fee lands, including the business’ industry (high- or low-risk), whether point-of-sale (bricks-and-mortar) or ecommerce (website), your volume of sales and amount of average sale. A business in a low-risk industry that has year-round (rather than seasonal) sales gets a lower rate than the high-risk business that sells mostly at Christmas.