CardConnect's pricing, and why nobody can publish it.
CardConnect is a processing platform sold through ISOs. It publishes nothing about price, which is normal for its half of the industry, and means the only honest page about its pricing is one about how to read the quote you are given.
What this page settles.
Three questions, in the order most people ask them.
What it actually is
CardConnect is a payment processing platform — authorization routing, settlement, a gateway, tokenization, and the reporting portal merchants log into. It is part of Fiserv.
What it is not is a company that sells merchant accounts to small businesses at a published price. It is sold and serviced through independent sales organisations, each of which sets its own processing rate, its own monthly fees, its own contract term and its own hardware arrangement, within whatever band the platform allows.
That is why its own site publishes nothing about price and routes every pricing question to a contact form. It is not evasion; a single published number could not be honest about every ISO’s pricing.
The practical consequence is the one worth internalising: the brand on your statement tells you almost nothing about what you pay. The ISO does. Who is who in payments.
Where we stand. PosNexus is an ISO, and CardConnect is one of the platforms we board merchants on. We are paid on the accounts we place. Treat everything on this page about the platform as coming from an interested party — and note that the method below works regardless of who is quoting you, including us.
Every published price
| CardConnect | |
|---|---|
| Pricing model | Quoted, nothing published |
| In person | Not published |
| Keyed | Not published |
| Online | Not published |
| Monthly | Not published |
| Contract | Not published |
| Monthly minimum | Not published |
| Funding | Not published |
| Chargeback fee | Not published |
| Hardware | Not published |
| Account type | Own merchant account, underwritten |
CardConnect publishes these at cardconnect.com. Read 2026-10-08.
Also published:
- The site publishes no rates, no fees and no terms, and routes every pricing question to a contact form
The blanks are the part most people came for, and they are blanks rather than omissions: where that table says a figure is not published, CardConnect does not publish it. We read CardConnect’s own pages rather than taking a number from a review site, and a number we cannot source we do not print.
Published prices change. These are list prices for a business buying direct, read on the date above, and a quote you are given may differ.
Where we stand. PosNexus is an ISO, and CardConnect is one of the platforms we board merchants on. We are paid on the accounts we place, so treat our view of it as coming from an interested party. Every figure in the table above is quoted from CardConnect’s own published page, with the date we read it and a link, so you can check the facts without taking our word for anything.
What it costs in practice
Since nothing is published, the useful thing is the method rather than a number.
What you are likely to be offered. Accounts on this platform are commonly quoted as interchange-plus, and sometimes as tiered. The difference matters more than the headline figure: an interchange-plus quote of “interchange + 0.50% + 10¢” is a complete statement of the margin, while a tiered quote of “1.79%” describes only transactions that qualify for the best tier, and the rest arrive as surcharges. That gap is where the classic complaint comes from — a quoted 1.79% arriving as a paid 3.48%. Why the bill went up.
Turn any quote into one number. Take your own monthly volume, your average ticket and your card mix. Apply the quoted margin to your volume, the per-item to your transaction count, add every monthly fee, and divide the total by volume. That is the effective rate, and it is the only figure comparable to anything else — including the flat rates of Square, Stripe and the rest. The method in full.
Expect interchange to be 70% to 80% of the total under any interchange-plus arrangement. The margin is what you are negotiating; the interchange is what you influence through how cards are read, how fast you settle, and whether commercial cards carry their data. Interchange optimisation.
What it is good at
It is a real merchant account, underwritten in your own name, with an acquiring bank behind it. That is a sturdier arrangement than being a sub-merchant under an aggregator, and the risk assessment happens before you trade rather than after. Merchant account versus aggregator.
Interchange-plus is available, which a flat-rate provider cannot offer at all. Above roughly $25,000 to $40,000 a month in card volume, that is where the money is.
The gateway and tokenization are solid, and a merchant with cards on file has a real stake in tokens that are properly managed. Tokenization and P2PE.
A human to escalate to. A good ISO reads your statement with you, chases a funding hold, and explains a fee. That is worth something, and it is the main thing an aggregator does not provide.
It is a large, established platform, which means hardware support, integrations and continuity.
Where it costs you
You cannot know the price in advance, and the price varies enormously between ISOs. That is the central cost of this model and there is no way around it other than reading the quote.
Tiered pricing still exists on this platform, as it does on all of them, and it is the arrangement that produces the gap between the quoted rate and the paid rate. Ask explicitly which model you are being quoted.
Terms, termination fees and equipment leases are the ISO’s, not the platform’s, and they range from month-to-month with bought hardware to four-year terms with non-cancellable leases. Agreement red flags.
Hardware may be locked to the deploying party, which makes a later switch cost new equipment. Can I keep my terminal.
Funding timing, monthly minimums and chargeback fees are all set in the quote and none are published.
Who it suits, and who it does not
An account on this platform suits an established business doing enough volume for interchange-plus to beat a flat rate, that wants a proper underwritten merchant account and a human to call, and that will read the agreement rather than the brochure.
It does not suit a new or very small business — the convenience of a published flat rate is worth more at that size — nor anyone who will not read the contract, because the contract is where the entire difference between a good deal and a bad one lives.
The eight questions to ask whoever is quoting you: the markup over interchange as a number; the per-item; every monthly fee named individually; the PCI arrangement including the non-compliance fee; the term and the renewal; the termination cost and whether it is a flat fee or a formula; whether hardware is bought or leased; and the funding timetable with the batch cutoff. A quote that does not answer all eight is not comparable to anything. Square against a CardConnect quote.
What we charge
Interchange + 0.50% + 10¢ in person, interchange + 0.75% + 25¢ keyed, with no contract, no monthly fee and no monthly minimum.
We board merchants on CardConnect, so we are not a neutral party about it and have said so above. What is neutral is the arithmetic: send us one page of a statement and we will work out what you actually pay today, which is a number you can then take to anybody.
While we are on the subject
What are CardConnect's rates?
It does not publish any. Pricing comes from whichever ISO quotes you, which is why two merchants on the same platform can pay very different amounts.
Is CardConnect a processor or an ISO?
It is a processing platform, part of Fiserv. The party quoting and servicing you is usually an ISO operating on it.
Is a quoted rate worse than a published one?
Not inherently. It can be much better for a business with enough volume to be worth pricing properly, and much worse for one that signs without reading.
How do I compare a CardConnect quote to Square?
Reduce both to an effective rate at your own volume, average ticket and card mix, with every monthly fee included. That is the only comparable figure.