09/26/2026
How Merchant Processing Fees Work in Clover POS: The 3 Fee Types Explained
If you accept card payments on a Clover POS system, a slice of every sale goes to processing fees. The problem is that slice is rarely a single, obvious number. According to Clover's own credit card processing guide, what you pay is actually three separate fee types charged by three different parties. Once you know what each one is, your monthly processing statement starts to make a lot more sense.
Fee Type 1: Interchange Fee (the wholesale fee)
The interchange fee is the wholesale cost of moving money from the customer's bank to yours. It is collected by the cardholder's bank — the issuing bank — and the rate is set by each card network (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover), as a percentage of the sale plus a small fixed amount.
- Non-negotiable. No processor can lower it.
- Usually the largest part of your processing cost. It covers the bank's handling costs plus the risk of approval, fraud, and bad debt.
- Varies by card type. Rewards cards cost more than basic cards. Clover's guide puts average US interchange at ~1.8% for credit and 0.3% for debit — Canadian rates differ slightly, and Interac debit is priced separately, so treat these as a benchmark.
Because interchange applies to every card transaction, it is the baseline cost everything else is built on.
Fee Type 2: Assessment (Service) Fee
Charged by the card network itself, not the bank and not your processor. Also non-negotiable. Typically a small percentage that can shift with your transaction volume and the risk level the networks assign your business — think of it as the card networks' toll for using their rails.
Fee Type 3: Processing Fee (the processor markup)
The fee your payment processor charges for moving data between your Clover terminal, the networks, and the banks. Unlike the first two, this one can be negotiated — and it varies by pricing plan, which is why two businesses with identical sales can pay noticeably different total rates.
How the three fees combine: pricing models
- Flat rate: One fixed rate (e.g., 2.9% + $0.30). Simple, but you get no discount on low-cost cards.
- Tiered: Transactions sorted into qualified, mid-qualified, and non-qualified buckets. Most complex, hardest to audit.
- Interchange plus: The most transparent — actual interchange and assessment passed through, plus a fixed markup shown separately (e.g., interchange + 0.30% + $0.10).
- Subscription: Flat monthly fee plus a small per-transaction charge, wholesale costs passed through separately.
If your statements never break out interchange from markup, ask for interchange-plus pricing — the easiest way to see what is negotiable.
Three ways Clover merchants can keep fees down
1. Negotiate the markup, not the wholesale. Interchange and assessment are fixed; the markup is the only fee you can move.
2. Reduce card-not-present transactions where you can. Keyed-in and online sales cost more than in-person chip or tap because of fraud risk.
3. Match the pricing model to your sales mix. A café doing small tap sales and a restaurant doing large phone-paid catering invoices have very different cost profiles — the cheapest headline rate is not always the cheapest total bill.
The bottom line
Every Clover POS transaction carries three fees: interchange (bank, non-negotiable), assessment (card network, non-negotiable), and processor markup (negotiable). Knowing which is which turns your statement from a confusing lump sum into a breakdown you can act on.
Running a restaurant in Edmonton, Calgary, or the GTA? Sevenflow helps Canadian restaurants get on Clover with the right pricing model for their business. Visit sevenflow.ca to learn more.
Source: Clover, "Credit Card Processing 101" — https://www.clover.com/small-business-resources/credit-card-processing
