The Complete Guide To Stax By Fattmerchant Fees & Pricing For Small Businesses

If you’re doing some research into Fattmerchant pricing and fees, you’re in the right place.

While Fattmerchant is a company that offers transparent pricing, and we don’t see the typical red flags, we think a post discussing its pricing model is needed. That’s because most merchants aren’t necessarily familiar with how a subscription-based, 0% markup company works. Below you’ll find answers to some of the most common questions we’ve come across about Fattmerchant fees and costs.

If you have a question that is not covered in the post below, feel free to leave us a comment, and we’d be happy to help!

How Does Fatthmerchant Pricing Work?

Fattmerchant is a subscription and volume-based processing company. Once you understand the basics of how Fattmerchant approaches their fee structure, monthly packages, and add-ons, you’ll find the cost is predictable.

Fattmerchant does not have a percentage markup, but that doesn’t mean they don’t charge you to process. Keep in mind that any processor you go with incurs fees from the card brands to process payments. These interchange rates are set by each card brand and will fluctuate based on the type of business, type of card, and how you process it. Fattmerchant passes these charges on to you in addition to the transaction fee. While the card brands may fluctuate their rates and transaction fees, Fattmerchant has steady pricing depending on which plan you’re in. We’ll discuss what these are and some additional opt-in services in the next section.

If you’re new to the world of credit card processing, it’s worth taking a minute to understand how pricing may work with other companies so you can have some point of reference. For instance, some credit card processors use a somewhat confusing tiered-rate pricing structure with rates that can vary wildly and make it hard to pin down costs. Other companies, like Paypal, charge a percentage rate markup and a fixed transaction charge.

So which one is best for you? That depends. In this post, you’ll find out everything you need to know about Fattmerchant’s fees so that you can determine the answer to that question for your business.

What Are Fattmerchant’s Fees?

Fattmerchant offers two main plans: Swiped Payments & Keyed Payments. After choosing which plan works for you, you’ll then be put into a subscription plan based on your sales volume. The lower-cost plan covers you until 500K/annually.

Here is what’s included in each of Fattmerchant’s plans:

Swiped Payments Fattmerchant Screen Capture

Swiped Payments Up To 500K annually

The Swiped Payments is for in-person sales and covers the following for $99/mo:

• $0.08 per transaction (in addition to the interchange rate)
• 0% markup on interchange
• Omni Platform (this is your dashboard with access to reporting and back-end features
• Level 1 PCI compliance
• Batch notifications
• EMV / NFC and swiped payments
• Same-day payment data
• Growth projections
• Heat map reporting
• Tokenized and encrypted customer data
• Customer reports
• In-house customer support (chat, email, and phone support)
• No statement fees

The Swiped Payments over 500K annually

This plan is for larger businesses and comes with everything in the basic plan plus a dedicated account success manager and priority risk monitoring for $199/month. You’ll also get a lower processing rate of $0.06 per transaction plus interchange and zero percent markup.

Screen Capture of Fattmerchant Keyed Payments Pricing

Keyed Payments up to 500K annually

The Keyed Payments plan is for businesses that primarily process card-not-present transactions like invoices and recurring payments and is $99/mo. Here’s the breakdown of the features:

• $0.15  per transaction plus interchange
• No batch fees
• No cancellation
• No PCI fees
• No statement fees
• Invoice management
• Securely stored payment information
• Recurring bill payments
• Inventory management
• Custom payment links
• Text2Pay SMS Invoices
• Customer management
• Lifetime payment data
• Growth projections
• Customer reports
• In-house customer service with chat, email, and phone support
• Level 1 PCI compliance
• Tokenized and encrypted data

Keyed Payments Over 500K Annually

This plan is built for businesses that process higher volumes, and it comes with a lower processing rate of $0.12 per transaction plus current interchange rates set by the card brands. You’ll get everything that comes in the basic plan plus a dedicated customer success manager and priority risk monitoring.

Contactless by Omni

Screen Capture of Contactless by Omni at Fattmerchant

Contactless by Omni is an optional package priced at $49/mo, in addition to your basic subscription. Any transactions processed by these means are at the keyed-in rate per the subscription plan that you’re currently subscribed to. Features include:

• Shopping cart
• Virtual terminal portal
• Email invoicing
• Using NFC card readers for touch-free payments in-store
• Text message payments with two-way communication
• Omni-channel reporting to sync data in one dashboard
• A demo is available upon request

For businesses that already are on the swiped plan, adding Contactless by Omni for $49/mo to their subscription expands how they can accept payment without having to add the full price of the keyed-in package, which starts at $99/mo.

Note On Fattmerchant Higher-Volume Pricing

If your business takes in more than 5 million per year, you can request a custom plan for the Enterprise Plan.

That’s it for the main plans offered by Fattmerchant. You do have some options to add additional features to your plan. We’ll cover those and pricing in a minute, but first, let’s take a look at interchange fees.

What are Fattmerchant’s Interchange Fees?

Let’s focus on interchange fees for a moment: No matter what processor you go with, you will have a fee, regardless of what a salesperson or website says. In Fattmerchant’s case, the zero percent markup sounds appealing — and it is — but keep in mind that you’ll also pay the interchange rate, which can vary.

To review, an interchange rate is a non-negotiable fee that any bank charges for card transactions. These fees are set up by the card brands themselves, are variable, and they’re always passed on to you, the merchant, in one way or another. Fattmerchant’s subscription model passes those costs along to you, just like any processor would. How a processor passes it along can make a huge difference. Some companies pass the interchange rate along with a fixed transaction fee (like Fattmerchant), some charge a percent rate markup that lumps the interchange rates and fees within that cost, and some charge both a transaction and percent markup (e.g., PayPal, Shopify, Square).

Additional Costs For Using Fattmerchant

While Fattmerchant doesn’t list all of its options and fees on the site, we got in touch with them to find out what other features they offer. Here’s what they shared with us:

• ACH Subscription: $49/mo and $0.25 per transaction
• Same-Day Funding: $29/mo and 1% per batch fee
• Denovo: $10/mo
• Dispute Manager: $25/mo
• Advanced Customization (add branding colors): $10/mo
• QuickBooks Pro Sync: $39/mo
• Terminal Protection Plan: $19/mo basic $29/mo premium
• Contactless by Omni: $49/mo
• Backup Processing: $39/mo
• EBT Processing: $10/mo
• WEX: $10/mo
• AT&T 3G for Mobile Terminals: $25/mo

How do Fattmerchant Fees Compare To Other Processors?

As a general rule, the higher your average ticket transaction is, the more you can save with Fattmerchant’s fixed transaction rate vs. the additional percent markup offered by companies like PayPal and Square. For instance, a locally owned home goods store may get hit pretty hard with percentage markups as it takes more cash from each sale.

For a simple example to illustrate my point, imagine you sell a decorative accent for $300, and we’ll assume for this example that it also represents your average transaction price point when you account for smaller and larger-ticket purchases.

PayPal Here charges 2.7% = processing fee of $8.10

Fattmerchant charges just the interchange rate 1.5% and $0.10 (example rate) of the card brand plus Fattmerchant’s fee of $0.08 = processing fee of $4.68

If you want to consider Fattmerchant’s monthly fees to find out how much you’re really paying per transaction, take the $99 subscription fee and divide your number of transactions into it. As an example, if you had 70 transactions, you would have to consider an additional $0.71 per transaction, which still makes Fattmerchant a better deal by a large margin compared to the percent PayPal would take.

Now let’s see what happens with a cup of coffee at $5.00 

Paypal Here charges 2.7% = processing fee of $0.14

Fattmerchant charges just the interchange rate 1.5% and $0.10 (example rate) plus Fattmerchant’s fee of $0.08 = processing fee of $0.26 

Again, if you want to consider Fattmerchant’s monthly fees to find out how much you’re really paying per transaction, take the $99 monthly fee and divide your number of transactions into this.

As an example, If I had 1,000 transactions a month at my coffee shop, I’d need to consider an additional $0.09 per transaction to account for the monthly fees that cover the features in your package.

For the smaller ticket or micro-payments industries, PayPal would likely be the better bet (if you just looked at processing costs), but for everyone else, Fattmerchant’s structure can likely save you money.

Is Fattmerchant The Cheapest Credit Card Processor?

I don’t want to make too many promises in this section. The truth is that I cannot tell you if Fattmerchant is the cheapest choice for your business based on their fees alone. As you can see in the above section, two different businesses can yield very different results depending on the pricing structure and their individual business. Average transaction size, volume, features, as well as what you expect from a processor all factor into what makes the best processor.

In my book, if a processing company runs effectively and offers stable and consistent service, with clear pricing, good software, and doesn’t bog you down with unnecessary fees and a binding contract, it can save you both time and money — without a doubt. I recommend comparing rates with a few different companies or using the general formula above as a guide. Take a look at our full Fattmerchant review as well, because you can see how we’ve rated each category, including consumer reviews. Fattmerchant seems to consistently earn high praise on review sites like TrustPilot, which is a great sign, in my book.

If you want to check out some other companies we think have a great value for the cost (including Fattmerchant), check out These 8 Cheapest Credit Card Processing Companies Will Save Your Small Business Money.