One flat rate. Pass-through costs shown clearly.

The rate

One percentage per transaction. No fixed fee on top. No per-card-type variation. The number on this page is the number on the merchant agreement and the number on the statement.

The flat-rate model is a choice, not a constraint. We could publish a 1.5% headline rate with a 20p fixed fee, like the incumbents, and have merchants paying 2.3% effective once corporate cards and small fees are factored in. We do not. The single rate is the single rate.

What the rate covers

Things merchants pay extra for elsewhere, that the 1.8% rate covers in full.

Most processors price the headline transaction rate and bill separately for the operational realities: premium-card surcharges, subscription billing surcharges, refund fees, chargeback fees, settlement reports, PCI compliance, dashboard access, dispute evidence. Fluxa folds all of it into the headline.

Every card at the same rate

Visa and Mastercard, debit and credit, consumer and commercial. A corporate card costs the merchant the same as a personal debit card. Stripe charges +0.4% on premium and commercial cards; Fluxa does not.

Wallets at the same rate

Apple Pay and Google Pay tokenised acceptance, billed at the rate of the underlying card. No wallet surcharge.

Recurring billing at the same rate

Subscriptions, proration, retries, dunning and the customer portal are included. Stripe Billing adds 0.7% on top of the card rate for subscription management; Fluxa does not.

Refunds at zero Fluxa cost

Full refunds release the original fee. Partial refunds are billed only on the kept portion. Fluxa does not add a platform fee when a payment is refunded. Scheme or payment partner pass-through costs may still apply.

Chargebacks without a Fluxa fee

Won chargebacks carry no Fluxa fee. Lost chargebacks pass through the card-scheme fee (typically £15) at cost. Stripe adds a £20 dispute fee on top; Fluxa does not.

3DS2 / PSD2 SCA at no extra cost

Strong Customer Authentication on every eligible transaction. Liability shift preserved on successful authentication. No per-3DS-attempt fee.

PCI compliance included

The merchant is in PCI DSS v4.0 SAQ-A scope because Fluxa never receives full PAN. Card numbers are tokenised at the payments partner, never stored by Fluxa. No PCI annual fee, no compliance-platform fee.

Dashboard, API and webhooks included

Real-time merchant dashboard, public API and HMAC-signed webhooks. No per-API-call charge, no dashboard-seat fee.

Direct support included

Email, phone and Slack Connect. No tier system, no triage queue, no per-seat support fee.

For the product surface itself, separate from the pricing inclusions, the canonical list is on the overview page.

What is not charged

The list of things Fluxa does not charge for, named in full so there are no surprises.

No per-transaction fixed fee

Stripe UK charges 1.5% + 20p. Square UK charges 1.4% + 25p online. Fluxa charges no fixed fee on top of the percentage rate.

No monthly minimum

If you process £0 in a month, you pay £0 in Fluxa fees that month.

No setup fee

No onboarding fee, no application fee, no integration fee.

No cross-border or FX uplift

Fluxa serves UK merchants on UK rails settling in GBP. There is no scenario in which an FX uplift applies on the Fluxa side at launch.

No corporate or commercial-card surcharge

The rate is the rate. A corporate card transaction costs the merchant exactly the same as a consumer debit card transaction.

No refund fee

Fluxa does not add a platform fee when a payment is refunded. Scheme or payment partner pass-through costs may still apply.

Fluxa chargeback fee: £0

Scheme or payment partner costs may apply on lost chargebacks. Fluxa does not add a markup.

No PCI compliance fee

PCI compliance is included. No annual or monthly fee for SAQ-A scope.

Worked examples

Real scenarios with the maths shown, including the cases where Fluxa is not the cheapest option. Honest beats clever.

Each example assumes a UK business processing on UK cards. Stripe figures use the published 1.5% + 20p UK domestic rate. The “Stripe effective” column accounts for the +0.4% premium typically charged on corporate and commercial cards in a normal merchant mix.

Low-ticket digital products · £10 average, 1,000 transactions per month

Monthly volume: £10,000. The Fluxa-friendly scenario, because the 20p fixed fee dominates Stripe at low ticket sizes.

• Stripe headline: 1.5% × £10,000 + 20p × 1,000 = £150 + £200 = £350 (3.50% effective)
• Fluxa 1.8%: £180 (1.80% effective)
• Saving: £170 per month, £2,040 per year

UK B2B SaaS subscription · £40 average, 250 transactions, 30% corporate cards

Monthly volume: £10,000. The typical UK B2B SaaS profile.

• Stripe headline: 1.5% × £10,000 + 20p × 250 = £150 + £50 = £200
• Stripe effective with 30% corporate cards at +0.4%: £200 + (£10,000 × 0.30 × 0.4%) = £212 (2.12% effective)
• Fluxa 1.8%: £180 (1.80% effective)
• Saving: £32 per month, £384 per year

Higher-ticket professional services · £200 average, 50 transactions

Monthly volume: £10,000. The Stripe-friendly scenario, because the 20p fixed fee becomes negligible at higher ticket sizes.

• Stripe headline: 1.5% × £10,000 + 20p × 50 = £150 + £10 = £160 (1.60% effective)
• Fluxa 1.8%: £180 (1.80% effective)
• Cost premium with Fluxa: £20 per month, £240 per year

If the entire merchant base is high-ticket UK domestic with no corporate-card mix, Stripe’s headline rate is lower than Fluxa’s. That is the honest answer. UK B2B SaaS merchants commonly see some corporate-card usage, refunds and EU cards in their mix; each adds an uplift to the effective rate above the headline.

Mid-ticket with 5% EU cards · £40 average, 250 transactions, 30% corporate, 5% EU

Monthly volume: £10,000.

• Stripe UK rate on £9,500: 1.5% + 20p × 237 = £142.50 + £47.40 = £189.90
• Stripe EU rate on £500: 2.5% + 20p × 13 = £12.50 + £2.60 = £15.10
• Corporate-card premium: £10,000 × 0.30 × 0.4% = £12
• Stripe effective: £217 (2.17% effective)
• Fluxa 1.8%: £180 (1.80% effective)
• Saving: £37 per month, £444 per year

How it compares

A short side-by-side. The full breakdown with sources and methodology is on the compare page.

Stripe UK

1.5% + 20p domestic, 2.5% + 20p EU, +1.5% international, +1% currency conversion, +0.4% premium cards, £20 chargeback fee, 0.7% Stripe Billing on subscriptions. Depending on card mix, refund rate, EU customer share and corporate-card usage, effective rates can sit meaningfully above the headline.

Square UK

1.4% + 25p online for UK cards, 2.5% + 25p for non-UK cards, +1.5% international fee, 1.75% in-person. Chargeback costs vary by provider and scheme rules. Online only on the Fluxa side of the comparison.

GoCardless

1% + 20p capped at £4, Direct Debit only (not cards). T+2 to T+3 settlement. Different product; relevant only if recurring bank pulls fit the business.

Adyen

Interchange++ pricing with a negotiated markup. Quote-only, designed for enterprise volumes; not typically accessible to UK SMB without a dedicated sales process.

Worldpay

Quote-only, multi-year contracts, blended rates that vary by card type and channel. Strong in legacy in-person estates.

PayPal Business UK

2.9% + 30p for standard card transactions. Substantially higher than the alternatives for online card processing.

What is not supported

Honest about scope. If a payment method or business profile below applies, Fluxa is not the right processor at launch.

• American Express is not supported at launch. UK Amex acceptance requires a separate scheme agreement; we will add support after launch demand justifies the engineering.
• PayPal is not supported. PayPal is a separate wallet, not a card scheme; merchants who need it should keep their PayPal account alongside Fluxa.
• In-person card terminals are not part of the launch product. Fluxa is online-only at launch.
• Non-UK businesses cannot onboard at launch. Fluxa is for UK companies registered at Companies House.
• Bureau de change / FX trading and other restricted MCC codes are not supported under the payments partner’s policy.
• High-risk verticals (adult content, gambling, certain crypto) are not supported under the payments partner’s policy.

The supported-list grows as the platform matures. The current list reflects what the team can run reliably with the support model published on this page.

VAT and tax

VAT applies to UK payment-processing fees. The arithmetic is identical for Fluxa as for every other UK card processor.

UK payment processing is a VATable service. HMRC requires VAT to be charged on transaction fees invoiced to UK merchants, regardless of the merchant’s own VAT status. Fluxa charges VAT on its fees on the standard rate.

VAT-registered merchants can reclaim the VAT on Fluxa fees through their normal VAT return, effectively reducing the net processing cost by 20%. On £1,000 of annual Fluxa fees, that is £200 reclaimable through the VAT return. Non-VAT-registered merchants pay the gross amount.

Fluxa does not provide tax advice. Speak to an accountant about how Fluxa fees should be treated in your specific case.

Regulatory disclosure

The information UK card-processing merchants are entitled to see under the Payment Services Regulations 2017 and Payment Systems Regulator guidance.

Fluxa Ltd is not directly authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. Fluxa operates as a Payment Facilitator under the FCA authorisation of a payments partner, which is the regulated entity for UK card processing and holds the cardholder funds from authorisation until settlement.

Service description

Acceptance and settlement of Visa and Mastercard transactions for UK businesses, including Apple Pay and Google Pay tokenised acceptance.

Fee structure

Single percentage rate per supported transaction (1.8% flat for UK businesses, custom volume rate below 1.8% above £500,000 per month sustained). No per-card-type variation. No per-transaction fixed fee.

Card-type breakdown

Because Fluxa charges a single flat rate per transaction, the proportion of fees attributable to personal debit, personal credit, business debit, business credit, consumer prepaid or commercial cards is irrelevant to the merchant: the headline rate is the rate. Aggregated card-mix figures will be published quarterly on this page once live transaction data exists.

Comparing Fluxa to alternatives

The side-by-side comparison with Stripe, Square, GoCardless, Adyen, Worldpay and PayPal is on the compare page. Sources are cited and access dates published.

Switching processors

Thirty days’ notice to terminate at any time. No exit fee, no early-termination charge. The merchant retains full access to historical transaction data for export.

Card scheme rules (Visa Core Rules, Mastercard Rules) apply to every transaction processed through Fluxa. Where Fluxa or the payments partner is required to act under those rules (for example, on chargebacks, fraud disputes or fund holds), the scheme rules and merchant agreement together determine the outcome.

How the 1.8% rate is held

The pricing-specific terms of the founding offer. The rate is the rate, locked for a year, with no asterisks.

Every UK merchant onboarded to Fluxa pays 1.8% flat per supported transaction. That rate is written into the merchant agreement and applied to every transaction processed. No backdating, no clawback, no surcharge introduced mid-term.

What the rate covers

1.8% flat per supported transaction, for UK businesses. The rate is fixed in the merchant agreement and cannot be changed unilaterally. We give thirty days’ notice of any change to published pricing.

Will my rate change over time?

The rate stays at 1.8% flat. It is written into your merchant agreement, and we give thirty days’ notice of any change to published pricing. Merchants who cross the volume threshold (more than £500,000 per month sustained) qualify for the volume rate below 1.8%, agreed in writing.

How termination works

Thirty days’ notice at any time. No exit fee, no early-termination charge, no return-of-funds penalty. The lock binds Fluxa to the rate; it does not bind the merchant to the platform.

What is not on top

No setup fee. No onboarding fee. No monthly minimum. Direct support from the team is included in the rate, not billed separately.

The full company-side reasoning for the flat-rate model and the support model is on the overview page.

Operational details

The mechanics that affect what gets charged when, in plain language.

Settlement timing

T+1 settlement is the aim, subject to merchant approval, risk review and payment partner terms. Settlement is made to the merchant’s nominated UK bank account in GBP.

What “supported transaction” means

Any successfully captured Visa or Mastercard transaction (including Apple Pay and Google Pay tokens on those cards). Failed authorisations are not billed. Refunds are not billed.

Refund handling

Full refunds release the original fee at no Fluxa-side cost. Partial refunds are billed only on the kept portion. Fluxa does not add a platform fee when a payment is refunded. Scheme or payment partner pass-through costs may still apply.

Chargeback handling

Chargebacks follow scheme rules (Visa Core Rules, Mastercard Rules). Fluxa has a six-state lifecycle exposed to the merchant and pre-dispute evidence captured on every transaction to support representment. Fluxa does not add a chargeback markup; scheme chargeback fees (typically £15) are passed through at cost on lost chargebacks only.

Currencies

Authorisation and settlement in GBP only at launch. The merchant’s nominated bank account must be a UK GBP account.

Volume rate threshold

The volume rate (below 1.8%) opens at £500,000 per month sustained, agreed in writing.

Notice to terminate

Thirty days’ notice at any time. No exit fee, no return of equipment, no early-termination charge.

Pricing questions

The questions we are asked most often about the pricing model.

Is the rate really flat?

Yes. One percentage per transaction, no fixed fee, no per-card-type variation, no corporate-card surcharge. The only thing on top is VAT, which is the same on every UK payment processor by HMRC rule.

Can the rate change?

The rate is fixed in your merchant agreement and cannot be changed unilaterally. If published pricing ever changes, existing merchants get thirty days’ notice and can leave with no penalty. Volume merchants above £500k per month qualify for a custom rate below 1.8%, agreed in writing.

Are there volume discounts below £500k per month?

No. Below £500k per month, every merchant pays the same 1.8% flat rate. Volume discounting is reserved for genuine enterprise volume where the payments partner’s buy rate makes it viable.

What about subscription billing? Is there a Stripe-Billing-style surcharge?

No. Recurring billing is included in the 1.8% rate. Stripe charges an additional 0.7% on top of the card rate for Stripe Billing subscriptions; Fluxa does not.

What is the cost on a refunded transaction?

Nothing on the Fluxa side. Full refunds release the original fee; partial refunds are billed only on the kept portion.

What happens on a chargeback?

Won chargebacks carry no Fluxa fee. Lost chargebacks pass through the card scheme fee (typically £15) at cost. Fluxa charges no markup and no dispute admin fee on top of the scheme cost.

Is the rate in the merchant agreement?

Yes. The rate published on this page is the rate in the merchant agreement, in the dashboard, and on the monthly statement. If the figures ever diverge, the merchant agreement is wrong and we will correct it.

How does this compare to interchange-plus?

Interchange-plus separates the wholesale cost (interchange) from the processor margin. The merchant sees both. Our flat rate folds them together. For UK merchants below enterprise scale, the interchange portion is set by the card networks and not negotiable by the merchant; only the processor markup is. Our flat published rate is simpler and removes the calculation overhead.