Interchange is the fee that card companies charge for every payment. That's something you have no way of avoiding. It hovers around 2-3% for credit cards and le

Interchange is the fee that card companies charge for every payment. That's something you have no way of avoiding. It hovers around 2-3% for credit cards and less for debit cards. Usually the most cost effective way to process card payments is to get a merchant account and to ask for a "interchange plus" rate. For example, interchange + 1% means the bank will charge you 1% on top of their cost (interchange). The 1% part is negotiable, the interchange is not. Note that Stripe functions as a merchant account + payment gateway. And the bigger part of the fee you're paying is used to cover the interchange fees. You can easily find a payment gateway for a flat fee like under $100/month but you still need a merchant account and you'll still be paying a % of every payment. And in your case it will be harder to get a merchant account as you're processing payments for multiple businesses, not just one. Unless you're processing a really large volume, my guess is that it's unlikely you'll get a better deal than Stripe.