Stripe

Stripe is the processor a great many of the tools in this directory are quietly built on, and going to it directly makes sense once you sell from a site you control. The rate is published rather than quoted, which is rarer in payments than it sounds. Subscriptions, invoices, payment links and a hosted checkout all sit on the same account. Nothing is billed monthly, so an idle account costs nothing.

The standard rate is 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per successful domestic card charge, with no monthly platform fee. Other methods carry their own rates on the same page: Klarna at 5.99 percent plus 30 cents, in-person Terminal charges at 2.7 percent plus 5 cents, and lower figures against some local methods. What the page does not include is tax registration or remittance, which is the line between this and Paddle.

Anybody selling from a site they control, and anybody whose volume makes a platform's cut cost more than a processor's. It asks you to handle your own sales tax, so a seller in many jurisdictions with no accountant should look at a merchant of record instead.