Card fees in Ireland: what you really pay on a €10 payment

When a guest taps a card for €10, the bank behind their card gets 2 or 3 cent. Your fee is usually much more than that. The difference is where the money is.

Your card fee is three fees

Every card payment gets split before the money lands in your account:

• Interchange goes to the guest's bank. For personal debit and credit cards issued in Europe, EU law caps it at 0.2% for debit and 0.3% for credit. On €10, that's 2 or 3 cent.
• Scheme fees go to Visa or Mastercard. They're small, they aren't capped, and they change often.
• Your provider's margin is what SumUp, Stripe, your bank or whoever runs your card machine keeps. It's usually the biggest slice, and it's the only one you can really negotiate.

What the providers publish

Two of the providers Irish cafés and restaurants use most put their prices online. As of November 2026:

So on a €10 payment with an ordinary Irish debit card, about 2 cent goes to the guest's bank. The rest of a 17 to 40 cent fee goes to the card scheme and your provider.

The 25 cent problem

Fixed fees hurt small payments most. A 25c fee on a €30 dinner order is less than 1%. On a €3.80 flat white it's 6.6%, and that's before the percentage goes on top. Add 1.5% and you're paying about 8% to take a card for a coffee.

If you run a café, look at your average payment. When most of your sales are under €10, a percentage-only rate usually works out cheaper than a lower percentage plus a fixed fee.

Business cards, Amex and visitors cost more

The EU caps only cover personal cards issued in Europe. Business cards, American Express and cards from outside Europe aren't capped the same way, so they cost you more. In a Dublin summer, with a lot of visitors from the US, that can push your average rate up more than you'd expect.

You can't pass it on as a surcharge

Since 13 January 2018, businesses in Ireland can't add a surcharge to payments on personal Visa or Mastercard debit and credit cards. The cost is yours to carry, which is why it's worth getting the rate right.

Check your own rate in ten minutes

1. Find your real rate. Take last month's statement and divide total fees by total card sales.
2. Find your average payment. Divide total card sales by the number of payments.
3. Compare. If your real rate is well above 1.5% and most of your guests pay with Irish debit cards, there's room to move.
4. Ask your provider for a better rate, or for interchange-plus pricing. With interchange-plus you pay the actual interchange and scheme fees, plus a margin you agree. The statement has more lines, but you can see exactly what you're paying for.

What a better plan is worth

Take a café doing €8,000 a month on cards.

None of this is exciting. But ten minutes with a statement once a year is usually worth a few hundred euro, and sometimes a lot more.