Apply for Cost Plus payment processing
About Cost Plus payment processing
Payment processors like Square are charged fees by card networks for processing transactions. These fees can be assessed based on the number of locations, the nature of the business, the volume of transactions and other factors determined by each network’s rules, such as Visa’s Fixed Acquirer Network Fee. Square passes these fees through to sellers each month for payments processed the previous month without adding a margin.
When Square processes transactions, we’re charged per-transaction fees by issuers and networks. The largest component of these fees is interchange or discount rates, which go to card issuers and are set by card networks like Visa and Mastercard.
Cost Plus payment processing is a payment pricing structure that involves you as a seller paying the costs of processing each payment plus a fixed markup that Square as your payment processor takes as revenue. There are two components of Cost Plus:
Cost of processing payments: Variable transaction fees and network fees that come directly from card issuers and networks like Visa and Mastercard.
Plus: The fixed markup that Square charges on top of the cost of processing. This is unique to each seller and reflected in your agreement. It typically includes a percentage fee.
You’re charged a blended payment processing fee at the time of a transaction. Square will transfer money from payments, minus the blended payment-processing fee, into your bank account in one to two working days depending on your settlement schedule.
Once per month, Square determines the total cost of processing each transaction and adds your negotiated markup to each transaction to reflect Cost Plus pricing. Each month, we’ll issue an adjustment to your account to reflect the cost of processing transactions plus a fixed markup for transactions processed in the previous month.
With Cost Plus, your overall processing fees are a function of the type of cards you process because Square is passing on to you the costs to process your payments.
Before you begin
Some cards, such as certain international cards, incur higher processing fees, while other cards, such as debit cards, incur lower processing fees.
Square doesn’t charge fees for activation, downloading the Square Point of Sale app, account inactivity or PCI compliance.
Transaction adjustment example
Your personalised list of initial blended fees can be found in the Pricing & subscriptions section of your Square Dashboard. For this example, we will assume the Chip and PIN processing fee is 1.75% + 0p. We are also assuming a negotiated fee of Cost + 1.00% + 0p.
Swipe [Transaction X], 09/09/2025:
Transaction Amount = £20.00
Initial Fee = £0.35 (CP Initial processing fee = 1.75%)
Note: CP Initial processing fee is unique to you and may not be 1.75%Actual Total Processing Cost to Square = £0.10
Total Cost Incurred by you = £0.10 + (£20.00 * 1.00%) + 0p = £0.50
[Transaction X] Adjustment 10/08/2025 = £0.05 credited to your account
Apart from the processing fees, remember that there may also be settlement fees.
Apply for Cost Plus payment processing
To be eligible for Cost Plus, Square’s Business Services team need the following information regarding your Square account:
Average transaction size.
Do you have plans to open new locations?
Are you currently processing all of your card sales through Square?
The best phone number to contact you.
You can contact Square Support with this information to start the evaluation process.
View Cost Plus reporting
Once you’re approved for Cost Plus payment processing, you can see each of your Cost Plus initial fees and the adjustment from your Square Dashboard. To do so:
Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Payments & invoices > Transactions.
Select the transaction you would like to view.
At the bottom of the transaction details, you’ll see your initial fee and adjustment.
Your adjustments will show as pending until the 10th of each month when the adjustments are calculated and sent.
Learn more about Cost Plus reporting via our YouTube video below: