Square Credit Card Fees in Canada: The Actual Rates

The published numbers

Square's Canadian pricing page lists three rates depending on how the card is accepted. In person — tapped, inserted or swiped — the rate is 2.5% of the transaction, no fixed fee. Online, through Square's Online Store, Online Checkout, eCommerce API or an emailed invoice, the rate is 2.8% plus 30¢ per transaction. A manually keyed-in card, a card saved on file, or a payment link sent through Square's Virtual Terminal is billed at 3.3% plus 15¢. Any card issued outside Canada adds a further 1.5% to whichever of those rates applies. The free plan carries no monthly software fee; Square's Plus plan, with added reporting and team features, starts at $35/month on top of the same per-transaction rates.

Why a flat rate costs more as volume grows

Square's rate is the same whether a customer pays with a basic debit-branded credit card or a premium travel-rewards card that costs Square more in interchange to accept. That is the trade flat-rate pricing makes: on a $1,000 month, the difference between card types is a few dollars and not worth tracking. On a $50,000 month, the premium-card transactions that would cost less under an interchange-plus statement are instead blended into the same 2.5-3.3%, and the margin Square keeps on the cheaper cards in your mix is what pays for that simplicity. Our own breakdown of interchange-plus vs flat pricing below walks through the three cost layers — interchange, network assessments, processor markup — that every provider's rate is built from, Square included.

Where it gets noticeably more expensive

Two of Square's own rate tiers are worth flagging before they show up as a surprise on a statement. First, the 1.5% international-card surcharge applies to any card issued outside Canada — a US-issued card used by a cross-border customer, for example — stacked on top of the base rate, so a $100 online sale to a US cardholder runs 2.8% + 30¢ + 1.5% = roughly $4.80, not $3.10. Second, the keyed-in rate at 3.3% + 15¢ is nearly a full point above the in-person tap rate; a business that takes a lot of phone orders or invoice payments is paying card-not-present pricing on every one of them, which is standard across the industry for fraud-risk reasons but adds up fast at volume.

How to tell if you're overpaying

The only way to know whether Square's flat rate costs more than an alternative is to calculate your own effective rate: total fees charged in a month, divided by total card sales that month, as a percentage. Compare that number against what an interchange-plus statement would show for the same volume and card mix — not against Square's advertised 2.5%, which only reflects the in-person rate on cards with no added surcharge. Our effective-rate guide below walks through the calculation with a worked example.