Stripe's fees look small on any single payment. This post breaks one month of a B2B platform's Stripe bill into every line, then ranks the five changes that cut it most.
One of my clients is a B2B platform serving mid-market and enterprise merchants. It brings in $220,000 a month ($2.6M a year) and runs its payments, billing and invoicing on Stripe. We pulled one month of data from its Stripe dashboard and modeled the bill at today's size and at a hypothetical 10X (that is, $26M in annualized revenue).
Left unchanged, the bill reaches $740K a year at 10X. Pulling all five levers would cut it by $480K a year at that scale.
All numbers in this article are for illustrative purposes only.
What does Stripe actually charge for?
Stripe charges a fee on almost every action: a payment, a payout, an invoice, a dispute. Each fee is its own line. Most are a percentage of the money moving.
To see yours, open Stripe's balance activity report:
Go to Reports → Balance summary
Select the date range. Set the timezone to UTC.
Explore or export the itemized balance change from activity.
Two terms to know:
Charges are revenue: money in from the merchants the platform serves.
Transfers are COGS: money the platform pays out to its merchants' customers.
The month in numbers:
Charges to merchants: $220K
Payouts to customers: -$95K
Refunds and disputes: -$15K
Stripe fees: -$6K
That leaves $205K of gross revenue after refunds and disputes, and $110K of net revenue after paying customers.
Stripe takes 3% of revenue – unless you take measures
In our example, monthly Stripe fees were $6,189.32. That is 2.8% of revenue.
It looks small until you put it in context. B2B platforms at scale run at 20% operating margin. Fees take 3 of those 20 points, or 15% of operating profit.
Annualized, the bill is $74K. At 10X it reaches $740K. So it pays to know exactly what each line is.
Stripe fees scale with volume
Almost every Stripe fee is a percentage of payments you process. So the bill grows in step with revenue: $74K a year today, $740K at 10X.
Few alternatives match Stripe's value below $50M in ARR. Most founders accept the fees.
Five levers reduce Stripe fees 3X – from $740K to $260K
Fees scale with volume, but the payment mix, billing architecture, and agreement terms are yours to change.
1. Get merchants to pay by ACH: saves $420K at 10X
ACH is a direct bank debit. It costs far less than a card.
Card and Link cost 2.9% + 30c per payment.
ACH direct debit costs 0.8%, capped at $5.
Card and Link are 78% of your Stripe fees.
The saving: $42K a year today. $420K at 10X. It goes straight to operating profit.
How to start:
Make ACH the default on invoices and checkout.
Keep cards as an option.
Where network rules allow, pass the card fee to the customer as a surcharge.
Start with repeat enterprise and mid-market customers. Not everyone will switch.
The catch:
ACH settles in 3-4 business days by default, 1-3 days later than cards.
Failed ACH debits carry a failure fee.
If you run negative working capital, the timing may matter more than the fee.
2. Negotiate your Stripe rate: saves $40K at 10X
Stripe offers custom packages to businesses with large volume: interchange-plus pricing and volume discounts. At $26M in annual revenue, you can negotiate.
Stripe does not publish its thresholds. Our working assumption: at $26M in annual revenue, the 2.9% card rate becomes 2.7%. That saves $40K a year. Interchange-plus could save more, but it is not guaranteed at this size. Stripe also weighs card mix, chargeback and return ratio, international share and growth, so lever 4 (covered below) helps here too.
This saving overlaps with lever 1: once card volume moves to ACH, there is less volume left to negotiate on.
3. Should you replace Stripe Billing and Invoicing? Usually not
Stripe Billing costs 0.7% of billing volume. Stripe Invoicing costs 0.4% of each paid invoice.
For our company that adds up to $5.9K a year today and $59K at 10X.
Billing has become a fertile ground for challengers. Maxio, Tabs, Measure, Hyperline, Sequence, and others have introduced their own billing solutions. Their published entry plans cost $6K to $18K a year. For companies with $3-30M in revenue, the cost is between $30K to $50K a year.
Our planning estimate is $30K to $50K a year at $26M. The net saving is $10K to $30K.
For simple billing, that rarely justifies the switch. These platforms pay off for custom contracts and usage-based billing.
4. Cut dispute fees: saves $14K at 10X
A refund sends money back to the customer and costs nothing but the forgone payment. A dispute, on the other hand, carries a fee: $15 per dispute, plus $15 to contest one, which comes back only if you win.
Eight disputes a month is $120. That is $1.4K a year today and $14K at 10X.
The bigger cost is leverage. A high dispute rate weakens your hand when you negotiate with Stripe (lever 2).
The fix: turn disputes into refunds before they reach the bank. Make sure your statement descriptor shows your company name. Customers who recognize a charge contact you, not their bank. A refund then avoids the $15 fee.
5. Batch payouts: saves $26K at 10X
Stripe charges $1.50 per payout. That is $5K a year today and $50K at 10X.
Pay the same people again and again? Batch payouts weekly or monthly. Half the payouts means half the fee. Today: $2.6K saved. At 10X: $26K saved.
Stripe Connect works on similar logic. It costs $3.4K a year today and $34K at 10X. Review which parts you need as you grow.
At $20M+ in ARR, you can realistically save up to $500K in payment fees a year
Pull every lever and the bill drops from $74K to $28K a year today. At 10X, it drops from $740K to $260K.
Stripe is not a black box. Every fee line names what it is for, and every price is published. The bill is hard to read only because there are so many lines.
The playbook:
Pull your own balance report.
Find your biggest fee lines.
Move what you can to ACH.
Batch your payouts.
Call Stripe when your volume gets interesting.