Pro tips series - Renegotiating your Stripe fees
In just a few years, Stripe has established itself as the go-to solution for collecting payments. With changes coming in 2025, it's time to take a look at the impact on your costs and, above all, ways to limit the damage.
What is changing and what it means
Costs are rising
Stripe is increasing its transaction fees to 3.40% + €0.30 per payment. If you make €100K in transactions per month, that represents €2,400 in additional fees per year compared to the old rate (2.9% + €0.30).
The Billing plan is simplified (and becomes more expensive)
If you use Stripe Billing to manage your subscriptions, the Starter plan will be replaced by a single plan at 0.7% (vs. 0.5% previously). This increase is expected to take effect in June 2025.
Small expenses that add up
- International payments: +1%
- Currency conversion: +1%
- Chargeback (customer disputes): €15 per transaction
In short, if you are growing, it is better to anticipate and optimize now.
How can you pay less in fees and optimize your payments?
1. Take advantage of Stripe's new technologies to increase your acceptance rate.
Every declined payment ismoney lost. Fortunately, Stripe has developed tools to maximize your authorization rate:
- Enhanced Issuer Network: reduces fraud and improves acceptance rates by 1 to 2%
- Adaptive Acceptance and Smart Retries: AI retries payments at the right time to avoid unnecessary declines
- Real-time monitoring: identifies problematic banks or cards so you can adjust your strategy
2. Use the right payment methods (not just credit cards)
Depending on your geographical area, there are much less expensive alternatives:
- SEPA direct debit: 0.35% instead of 3.40% for a bank card in Europe
- ACH (US): 0.80% with a €5 cap on transactions
If your customers are OK with it, it's a direct saving on every transaction.
3. Negotiate with Stripe (yes, it's possible)
If you make more than €200K/month in transactions, you can negotiate lower fees. But Stripe doesn't advertise this.
How do you go about it?
- Highlight your transaction volume.
- Compare with other solutions (Adyen, Checkout.com, etc.).
- Put Stripe in competition (even if you don't plan on leaving).
Several companies have managed to reduce their fees to below 2.5% through negotiation. It's worth a try!
4. Avoid conversion fees (1% that can be avoided)
If you accept payments in multiple currencies, open a multi-currency account (Wise, Revolut Business, etc.) to avoid Stripe's 1% surcharge on conversions.
5. Enable network tokens
A bit technical, but crucial. Network Tokens improve authorization rates for Visa, Mastercard, and Amex. Fewer declined payments = more revenue without effort.
6. Use Stripe's advanced analytics
Stripe now offers real-time payment performance tracking. This allows you to identify:
- Underperforming payment methods
- Banks that reject too many transactions
- Possible optimizations for your acceptance rate
In summary
Yes, Stripe is raising its prices, but if you apply these 6 optimizations, you can limit the increase and even improve your conversions.
