From what I understand, in order to charge customers’ credit or debit cards, you need to use a payment processor like Paypal or Stripe. It seems like the fee for using this service is around (4% + $0.50) per transaction.
To get around this, you could make users link a bank account for ACH transfer or use crypto to circumvent this fee.
Specifically for my situation, I’m offering a B2C SaaS subscription service with plans around $5 or $10. The fees are pretty steep for these smaller monthly transactions, am I just forced to pay these fees if I want to take online payments?
For a broader audience: in your startup, how do you accept payments, who is the processor, and what fees are you paying?
At the moment, there really isn’t a way around the fees associated with card payment processing.
As suggested by u/summerinside, it would be good to incentivize your customers to pay annually or in larger increments to limit your payment processing fees.
Not sure how much volume you’re pushing, but you should shop the payment processors and sign a contract. Signing a contract would decrease the take rate from these transactions compared to what you normally see advertised on their website.