Card payments are a central part of daily business in Sweden, with debit cards, in particular, accounting for the largest share of payments. As such, many Swedish businesses have to contend with card fees, which influence margins, pricing decisions, and the payment methods they support.

This guide covers how card fees in Sweden are structured across different payment types and how businesses can manage them more effectively as they grow.

What’s in this article?

• What are card fees in Sweden?
  
• Why do card fees matter for businesses in Sweden?
  
• How are card fees structured across payment options in Sweden?
  
• What to consider when choosing card networks and payment methods
  
• How to manage and reduce card-related payment costs
  
• How Stripe Payments can help
  

What are card fees in Sweden?

A card fee is the cost a business pays every time a customer uses a debit or credit card. A small portion of each sale is deducted to cover the systems that enable the payment, including the cardholder’s bank and the payment processor. Those costs are usually bundled into a percentage of the transaction plus a small fixed fee. For many Swedish businesses, the total fee paid to a payment provider is around 1%–3% plus a couple kronor per payment, depending on the card type and setup.

Card fees typically include three main components:

• Interchange fees, which go to the customer’s bank

• Network fees, which go to the card networks

• Processing fees, which go to the provider handling authorization, security, and settlement

Why do card fees matter for businesses in Sweden?

In Sweden, card payments are at the center of everyday commerce. While they’re a small cost per transaction, they increase with revenue. As a result, these fees influence many business decisions.

Here’s how:

• They directly reduce margins: Every card payment takes a percentage of a sale. When most sales are card-based, those percentages can add up to a significant share of total revenue.

• They can’t usually be passed to customers: European Union (EU) rules prohibit surcharges on most customer card payments, so businesses absorb the cost or factor it into pricing rather than itemizing it at checkout.

• They shape pricing strategy: Because fees are embedded into operating costs, many businesses price their products to account for card usage fees and spread the cost across all sales.

• They influence minimum transaction sizes: Fixed per-transaction fees make very small purchases disproportionately expensive, which is one reason microbusinesses sometimes avoid cards or steer customers toward alternative payment methods.

• They affect payment acceptance decisions: Higher fees on certain card types can influence which ones a business accepts or actively encourages.

• They impact cross-border and online expansion: International cards and ecommerce transactions often cost more, which means expanding into new markets can raise average payment costs.

• They increase with growth: As transaction volume increases, card fees rise too, which turns payments into a strategic cost center rather than a background expense.

How are card fees structured across payment options in Sweden?

In Sweden, fees vary by card type and how the payment is initiated. Businesses often pay very different costs across otherwise similar transactions.

Here’s how it works:

• Debit card payments: These are typically the lowest-cost card transactions for Swedish businesses. EU rules cap interchange on consumer debit cards at 0.2%. Because Swedish debit cards were already inexpensive before regulation, total fees are often much lower than those in other markets.

• Credit card payments: Credit cards carry slightly higher costs, with interchange capped at 0.3% for consumer cards.

• Corporate and commercial cards: These cards are not covered by EU interchange caps. Fees can be much higher, which is why payments made with business-issued or premium cards are often outliers on statements.

• Cards issued outside the EU: Non-European cards usually come with higher interchange and additional network fees.

• Digital wallet payments: Payments made through digital wallets such as Apple Pay or Google Pay use the underlying card network. From a fee perspective, they’re treated the same as a physical debit or credit card.

EU regulators continue to monitor interchange caps and scheme fees, which means the regulatory framework around card costs could change.

What to consider when choosing card networks and payment methods

Every payment method has a different mix of costs, coverage, and customer expectations. Swedish regulation requires online checkouts to present direct payment options before credit-based ones.

From there, Swedish businesses weigh the following factors when deciding which payment methods to use:

• Cost per transaction: Visa and Mastercard are relatively inexpensive, while cards outside the EU cap framework (e.g., corporate or premium cards) can cost significantly more per transaction. Swish, a Swedish mobile payment system, typically has lower transaction fees than credit cards, but it only works for customers with Swedish bank accounts.

• Customer access: Cards work for tourists, international customers, and cross-border ecommerce. Local methods such as Swish are cheaper but geographically limited.

• Settlement timing: Buy now, pay later (BNPL) options and invoicing can increase conversion and order size for many businesses. But they come with higher fees and longer settlement timelines.

• Checkout speed: Cards and digital wallets lead to fast, familiar checkout flows. Other payment methods might introduce extra steps that can hurt conversion.

How to manage and reduce card-related payment costs

The businesses that handle card fees best treat payments as a system to refine. That means monitoring costs, making strategic decisions, and testing different options to see how they affect costs.

As a business owner, here’s what you can do:

• Track effective payment costs: Look at total fees as a percentage of revenue to help you understand what payments truly cost.

• Understand your card mix: Monitor how much volume comes from debit, credit, corporate, and international cards. Shifts in customer behavior can substantially change costs.

• Negotiate as your volume grows: As the number of transactions increases, pricing often becomes flexible. Many providers have custom or tiered rates for higher output.

• Offer lower-cost alternatives: Including options such as Swish or direct bank payments gives your customers a choice and naturally shifts volume away from higher-fee cards.

• Design your checkout intentionally: The order and visibility of payment methods can influence customer selection.

• Reduce disputes and failed payments: Strong authentication, clear refund flows, and responsive support help you avoid chargeback fees and extra administrative work.

• Consolidate your payment infrastructure: Using a single platform for cards and local payment methods simplifies reporting, reduces errors, and improves cost visibility.

As regulations, customer preferences, and transaction volumes change, you’ll need to review payment costs just like any other strategic expense.

How Stripe Payments can help

Stripe Payments provides a unified, global payments solution that helps any business—from scaling startups to global enterprises—accept payments online, in person, and around the world.

Stripe Payments can help you:

• Optimize your checkout experience: Create a frictionless customer experience and save thousands of engineering hours with prebuilt payment UIs, access to 125+ payment methods, and Link, a wallet built by Stripe.

• Expand to new markets faster: Reach customers worldwide and reduce the complexity and cost of multicurrency management with cross-border payment options, available in 195 countries across 135+ currencies.

• Unify payments in person and online: Build a unified commerce experience across online and in-person channels to personalise interactions, reward loyalty, and grow revenue.

• Improve payments performance: Increase revenue with a range of customizable, easy-to-configure payment tools, including no-code fraud protection and advanced capabilities to improve authorization rates.

• Move faster with a flexible, reliable platform for growth: Build on a platform designed to scale with you, with 99.999% historical uptime and industry-leading reliability.

Learn more about how Stripe Payments can power your online and in-person payments, or get started today.