Work the fee forwards from a payment, or backwards from the amount you need to keep.
What the customer sends you, before PayPal takes its cut.
Sets the rates below. Edit either one to use your own.
Per transaction, in the currency received.
Friends and family transfers funded by a PayPal balance or a linked bank account are free, but using them to take payment for a sale breaches PayPal’s acceptable use policy and leaves the buyer with no purchase protection and you with no seller protection. Selling belongs on goods and services.
Rates shown are PayPal’s published US rates as of August 2026. They vary by country, currency and account type, and cross-border selling adds roughly 1.5% on top of the domestic rate. Treat this as an estimate for pricing decisions rather than an accounting reconciliation, and check your PayPal statement for the exact charge.
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For US online commercial transactions PayPal charges 3.49% plus $0.49 per payment as of August 2026. On a $100 sale that is $3.49 plus $0.49, so $3.98 in total, leaving $96.02 in your balance. Standard PayPal Checkout on a commercial account is priced lower at 2.99% plus $0.49, and rates differ outside the US.
The receiver pays. PayPal deducts the fee from the payment before it reaches your balance, so the buyer is charged the full amount and you get the remainder. The only common exception is a friends and family transfer funded by a card, where the sender is charged for the card funding instead.
Domestic friends and family transfers funded by a PayPal balance or a linked bank account carry no fee. Card-funded transfers cost the sender around 2.9% plus a fixed fee, and international personal transfers carry their own charge. Free applies to genuine personal transfers only.
No. Using friends and family to take payment for goods or services breaches PayPal's acceptable use policy and can get an account limited or closed. It also strips both sides of their protections: the buyer has no purchase protection and you have no seller protection if a dispute is raised. The saved fee is not worth losing the account.
At the US goods and services rate of 3.49% plus $0.49, PayPal takes $3.98 from a $100 payment and you keep $96.02. That works out at an effective fee of 3.98%. On the lower 2.99% Checkout pricing the fee would be $3.48 instead.
At 3.49% plus $0.49, a $500 payment carries a $17.94 fee and nets $482.06, while a $1,000 payment carries a $35.39 fee and nets $964.61. Notice the effective rate falls as the amount rises, from 3.59% on $500 to 3.54% on $1,000, because the fixed $0.49 spreads across a bigger payment.
Add the fixed fee to your target, then divide by 1 minus the percentage rate as a decimal. To net exactly $100 at 3.49% plus $0.49: $100 plus $0.49 gives $100.49, divided by 0.9651 gives $104.12. Charging $104.12 leaves a fee of $4.12 and lands $100 in your balance. Simply adding 3.49% to $100 would leave you short.
Because it does not scale with the payment. On a $1,000 sale the fixed fee is 0.05% of the total, but on a $5 sale it is 9.8% on its own before the percentage rate is even applied. That makes a $5 payment cost roughly $0.66 in fees, an effective rate of 13.3%, which is why low-value single item sales are so hard to run profitably.
Micropayments pricing of 4.99% plus $0.09 trades a higher percentage for a much smaller fixed fee, so it wins on small payments. The crossover against 3.49% plus $0.49 sits at about $26.67. Below that, micropayments cost less: a $10 payment costs $0.59 on micropayments against $0.84 on standard pricing. Above it, standard pricing is cheaper.
Cross-border commercial payments add roughly 1.5% on top of the domestic rate, so a US seller taking an overseas payment pays around 4.99% plus the fixed fee. The exact surcharge depends on the buyer's country, and the fixed fee is charged in the currency the payment arrives in rather than always in dollars.
If the payment arrives in a currency your account does not hold, PayPal converts it and applies a currency conversion spread on top of the wholesale exchange rate, commonly in the region of 3% to 4%. That sits on top of the transaction fee, so an international sale can carry three separate costs: the base rate, the cross-border surcharge and the conversion spread.
When a buyer raises a chargeback with their card issuer rather than a PayPal dispute, PayPal charges a fee of around $20 in the US as of August 2026, on top of the refunded amount. Standard PayPal disputes resolved through the resolution centre generally do not carry that fee. Since 2019 the original fixed fee on a refunded payment is not returned to you either, so a refunded sale still costs you money.
For a business, payment processing fees are normally a deductible operating expense in most jurisdictions, which is why bookkeeping should record the gross sale as income and the PayPal fee as a separate cost rather than only banking the net figure. This is general information rather than tax advice, so confirm the treatment with your accountant.
Yes. No signup, no email and no limit on how many payments you run through it. It is built by Mage Loyalty, a loyalty, referrals and store credit app for Shopify.
Mage is a loyalty, referral and store credit app built for Shopify. Reward repeat purchases, run VIP tiers, and give customers a reason to come back, without writing a line of code.
