Card vs ACH vs Wire Cost Optimizer

How to use it

Enter what you collect each month, your average payment size, and how that splits between cards, bank transfers and wires. The calculator prices each channel separately and shows what shifting volume between them is worth.

Where the number comes from

• Card cost is a percentage of volume plus a fee per transaction, so it scales with the size of the payment.
• Bank transfer cost is a flat fee per payment plus the expected cost of failures — the failure rate times the return fee.
• Wire cost is a flat fee per payment, typically the highest per item and the cheapest as a percentage on large amounts.
• The crossover point is where a flat transfer fee equals the card cost: the difference between the two fixed fees, divided by the card percentage rate.
• Shares are normalised to total 100%, so any remainder after card and bank transfer is treated as wire.

What goes wrong

The part most calculators leave out.

• Card acceptance is not purely a cost decision. Cards settle faster, fail less often, and for some buyers are the only practical method — removing the option can cost more in lost or delayed sales than the fees saved.
• Bank transfers settle slowly and can be reversed within a dispute window in some schemes. Faster settlement has real working-capital value that this comparison does not price.
• The failure rate matters more than it looks. Each failed transfer costs a fee, delays the cash, and takes staff time to chase, and the recovery effort is not counted here.
• Interchange varies by card type. A business taking mostly commercial or cross-border cards pays far more than the blended rate entered here.
• Surcharging or steering customers toward cheaper methods is restricted or prohibited in many jurisdictions and by card scheme rules. Check before you build it into a checkout.

Questions

When is a card cheaper than a bank transfer?

On small payments. A flat 1.50 transfer fee is worse than 2.6% on anything under about 50. The percentage model only becomes expensive as the ticket grows, which is why card economics work for retail and fail for B2B invoicing.

Can I charge customers for paying by card?

It depends entirely on your jurisdiction and card scheme rules. Surcharging is restricted or banned in many places and capped in others. Offering a discount for bank transfer is often treated differently from adding a card surcharge, but both need checking locally.

Why include a failure rate for bank transfers?

Because they fail more often than cards — insufficient funds, closed accounts, wrong details — and each failure carries a fee and a delay. Ignoring it makes bank transfer look cheaper than it is, though it usually still wins on large payments.

Does anything I type get sent anywhere?

No. The whole calculation runs in your browser. Nothing is transmitted, stored, or logged, and there is no account to create.