[saurik]

Stripe's pricing is ludicrously expensive. And Square is trying to be more than just a payment processor. These companies are competing for markets that seriously care more about "pretty website" than "efficient business". I mean, even PayPal had much better rates than Stripe: that $1 charge would have a $0.10 fee if done via PayPal (even using PayPal's direct credit card billing solutions). For larger price points, Stripe finally added some volume discounts, but they are nowhere near as good as their competitors (like, they require so much volume as to be unattainable for most merchants). Using Stripe as a comparison for this kind of purpose is thereby just silly...

[sporkmonger]

Fair enough. That said, I know of small businesses that are charged vastly larger %s going through a merchant account, etc (like nearly double what Square/Stripe charge) so I don't think the rate is entirely unfair. I'd rather aim for a median rate than 'lowest possible' for a table like this, but I haven't seen anybody post average rates that are anything but estimates and I am reluctant to publish a number in a table like that that I'd just pulled out of thin air. I believe median card-not-present rate is ~2.5%, but that's a thin air number.

[saurik]

The issue at hand is that you've pulled a ludicrous flat overhead fee for the low-end numbers, leading to a 33% charge... even normal un-negotiated merchant accounts are usually not that expensive (the percentage gets higher, but the fixed fees are normally lower). PayPal (which as far as I know anyone could get) is 5%+$0.05, which works out to 10% on the $1 charge.