BNPL merchant fees: what providers actually charge in 2026

BNPL merchant fees are typically a percentage of order value plus a fixed per-transaction fee, and they are almost always higher than standard card processing. The harder truth: none of the four major providers publishes its merchant rate. Klarna, Afterpay, Affirm, and Shop Pay Installments all set rates privately, per merchant, behind a signed agreement.

Here is how strange the information gap has become. Search "shop pay installments fees" and the top result is not Shopify's documentation. It is a Reddit thread from a merchant who was surprised by what they were charged, ranking above Shopify's own help center. When forum posts outrank official docs, it means the official docs never answered the question.

We build Payment Plans (by PreProduct), a merchant-funded alternative to lender-backed BNPL, so we have an obvious interest here. We'll be careful to separate what's documented from what isn't. This guide covers what each provider actually discloses, the one hard public number that exists anywhere, how to find the rate on your own account, and what the arithmetic looks like at high AOV.

Key Takeaways - No major BNPL provider publishes its merchant rate. Afterpay directs merchants to their signed agreement, Klarna handles pricing during onboarding, and Shopify references "the fee incurred" without stating it. - Affirm is publicly traded, so its filings show a blended merchant take rate of roughly 2.4% of gross merchandise volume for the year ended June 30, 2025. That is an average across every merchant and product type, not a quotable rate card. - Affirm's own financial reports state that its rate as a percentage of gross merchandise volume "increases with longer-term, non interest-bearing loans with higher AOVs", which describes high-ticket merchants specifically. - Your Shop Pay Installments rate is visible in your Shopify admin under Settings, then Payments, then Shopify Payments, then View payment rates. - The BNPL fee is not returned when you refund an order, which materially changes the cost of a high-return category.

How much do BNPL providers charge merchants?

BNPL merchant fees generally combine a percentage of the order value with a fixed per-transaction fee, set individually per merchant. Published third-party estimates commonly cite a range of roughly 2% to 8%, but no provider confirms a public rate card, so treat any single quoted number with suspicion, including ours.

The fee exists for a real reason. A BNPL provider pays you the full order value at checkout and then carries the credit risk of collecting from your customer. That service costs money, and the fee is its price. Whether it's worth it is a business question, not a moral one.

What makes it difficult is that you often can't evaluate the tradeoff until after you've signed.

Provider	Publishes a merchant rate?	What the provider says
Afterpay	No	"your Afterpay merchant agreement will detail this"
Klarna	No	Pricing handled during onboarding
Affirm	No	Rates set per merchant arrangement
Shop Pay Installments	No	Refers to "the fee incurred" without stating it

What each provider actually discloses about BNPL merchant fees

We checked all four providers' own pages in August 2026. Not one of them states a number.

Afterpay

Afterpay's merchant fees page confirms the structure while withholding the figures. The fee, it says, "comprises a fixed fee, plus a percentage amount, and can differ depending on whether the Afterpay transaction was online or in-store," then adds that "your Afterpay merchant agreement will detail this".

So a merchant researching Afterpay learns the shape of the fee and nothing about its size.

Klarna

Klarna's business pages market the product without listing transaction fees, percentage rates, or commission structures. The calls to action route you into the merchant portal, where pricing is discussed as part of onboarding. Notably, a top-ranking result for "klarna merchant fees" is a Reddit thread asking whether anyone has successfully negotiated their rate down, which tells you these rates are negotiable, and therefore variable.

Affirm

Affirm publishes no rate card either. Its business pages describe the merchant offering, and pricing is set per merchant. Affirm is the exception that proves useful, though, for a reason that has nothing to do with its marketing. More on that in the next section.

Shop Pay Installments

Shopify's own documentation is the most quietly frustrating of the four. The FAQ explains that "you'll receive full payment for your order within 1 to 3 business days, excluding the fee incurred for using Shop Pay Installments". The fee is acknowledged in the same sentence that avoids quantifying it.

The same page carries a detail that deserves more attention than it gets: "The Shop Pay Installments transaction fee isn't returned to you when you issue a refund." If you sell in a category with meaningful return rates, you're paying the BNPL fee on revenue you don't keep.

Shop Pay Installments is available to eligible stores in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, on orders from $35 to $30,000 USD.

Want the full picture of what sits between you and a lender-free setup? Read the seven alternatives to buy now, pay later for merchants.

The one public number: what Affirm's filings reveal

Affirm is a public company, which means its merchant economics appear in its published financial reports even though they never appear on its website. This is the only hard, primary-source figure available for BNPL merchant fees anywhere.

In its fiscal 2025 Form 10-K, for the year ended June 30, 2025, Affirm reported merchant network revenue of $882.7 million on gross merchandise volume of $36.7 billion. That works out to a blended merchant take rate of about 2.4%.

Three caveats matter, and skipping them would make the number misleading.

1. It's an average across everything. Every merchant, every product type, every loan term, blended into one figure. Nobody's quoted 2.4%.
2. It isn't purely merchant fees. The filing notes that a portion of merchant network revenue is affiliate revenue, and that merchant incentives and rebates are recorded as reductions to it.
3. The mix moves the rate, and it moves it toward high-ticket merchants. Affirm's financial reports state plainly that merchant network revenue as a percentage of gross merchandise volume "typically increases with longer-term, non interest-bearing loans with higher AOVs, and decreases with shorter-term, interest-bearing loans with lower AOVs."

That third point is the one worth sitting with. If you sell a $2,400 sofa on a 12-month interest-free plan, you're precisely the merchant Affirm describes as generating an above-average rate. The blended 2.4% is a floor for your segment, not an estimate of your cost.

The filing also confirms why no rate card exists: "The fees vary depending on the individual arrangement between us and each merchant and on the terms of the product offering."

How to find the BNPL merchant fees you are actually paying

Since the public web won't tell you, go to your own account. For Shop Pay Installments, your rate is in your Shopify admin: Settings → Payments → Shopify Payments → View payment rates.

For Klarna, Afterpay, or Affirm, the number lives in your merchant agreement, and Afterpay's documentation points you there explicitly. If you can't find the agreement, your account manager can confirm the current rate. Ask three questions specifically:

1. What is the percentage, and what is the fixed per-transaction component?
2. Does the rate differ by plan length, order value, or channel?
3. What happens to the fee when I refund an order?

Then do something most merchants never do: pull a quarter of settlement reports and calculate your effective rate from actual deposits rather than the quoted one. Refunds, chargebacks, and mix shifts mean the number you were quoted and the number you paid are rarely identical.

What BNPL merchant fees cost at high AOV

Percentages feel abstract until you attach them to a real order, which is where high-AOV merchants find the argument gets uncomfortable.

Take a $2,400 dining table. At a 2.4% blended rate, the BNPL fee is $58. At 6%, it's $144. At 8%, it's $192. The spread between the low and high end of the commonly cited range is $134 on a single order, before your standard card processing costs.

Picture a furniture brand, run by someone we will call Dana, selling roughly 40 of those tables a month through a BNPL provider. At the low end that is $2,320 a month in provider fees. At the high end it's $7,680. Over a year, the gap between those two rates is around $64,000, on identical revenue. Dana has no way to know which end of that range applies until the settlement reports arrive, because the rate was never published anywhere she could read it.

That gap, not the existence of a fee, is the real problem. You can't model margin on a number you haven't been told.

What you pay with a merchant-funded payment plan instead

There's a structurally different option, and being clear about its costs is the whole point of an article like this one.

With a merchant-funded plan, no lender advances you the money, so there is no lender fee. Your customer pays you directly over time through Shopify checkout. The first installment is charged at checkout, the card is vaulted by Shopify, and the remaining installments are charged automatically on the schedule you set. The order stays on a fulfillment hold and ships only once the balance reaches zero.

The cost layers, stated plainly:

1. Standard Shopify Payments processing on each installment, exactly as you pay on any other order.
2. The Payment Plans app fee. At the time of writing, the Shopify App Store listing shows a commission-only plan that is free to install with 5% commission on payment plan transactions, and a Scale plan at $200 per month with 0% commission and a 7-day free trial. Pricing changes, so check the current pricing rather than trusting this paragraph in six months.
3. No separate BNPL provider cut, because there is no BNPL provider.

Note what we aren't claiming. This isn't free, and it isn't automatically cheaper. On the commission-only plan at 5%, a high-AOV merchant paying a genuinely low negotiated BNPL rate could pay more with us, and the flat monthly Scale plan is what changes that math at volume. Run your own numbers.

The honest tradeoff is bigger than the fee anyway. You get paid as installments come in rather than upfront, and nothing ships until the order is fully paid, so your stock stays allocated in the meantime. BNPL's genuine advantage is that it removes both of those constraints: full payment in days, and immediate shipment. If your cash flow depends on that, BNPL is the right tool, and no fee comparison should talk you out of it.

Payment Plans requires Shopify Plus. Payment Plans does not provide a loan or perform a credit check. Merchants should confirm that their payment plan terms, disclosures, cancellation policy, and local setup meet the requirements that apply to their business.

Curious how the mechanics compare? See how Shopify payment plans work and which route fits your store.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Klarna charge merchants?

Klarna does not publish its merchant rates. Pricing is set per merchant during onboarding, and merchant discussions suggest rates are negotiable. Your specific rate is in your merchant agreement or available from your Klarna account manager.

Do I get the BNPL fee back if a customer returns the order?

Not with Shop Pay Installments. Shopify's documentation states that "The Shop Pay Installments transaction fee isn't returned to you when you issue a refund". Check your agreement for other providers, because this detail is easy to miss and expensive in high-return categories.

Why won't BNPL providers publish their rates?

Because rates are negotiated individually and vary by merchant size, order value, plan length, and risk profile. Affirm's financial reports confirm fees "vary depending on the individual arrangement between us and each merchant and on the terms of the product offering." Publishing a single number would misrepresent what most merchants pay and weaken the provider's negotiating position.

Is Shop Pay Installments cheaper than Klarna or Afterpay?

There's no way to answer this from public information, because none of the three publishes rates. The only reliable comparison is between the actual quotes on your own account. Ask each provider for a written rate for your order profile, then compare like with like.

Can I offer installments without paying a BNPL provider?

Yes. A merchant-funded payment plan removes the lender entirely: the customer pays you in installments through Shopify checkout, and you receive the money as it's charged. You still pay standard Shopify Payments processing and an app fee, and the order ships only once it's fully paid.

The takeaway

BNPL merchant fees are knowable, just not publicly. Afterpay points you to your agreement, Klarna prices during onboarding, Affirm sets rates per merchant, and Shopify mentions "the fee incurred" without quantifying it. The single hard public figure is Affirm's blended merchant take rate of roughly 2.4% of gross merchandise volume in its fiscal 2025 filing, and the same filing says that rate runs higher for longer-term plans on higher-AOV orders.

So do three things. Find your actual rate in your Shopify admin or your merchant agreement. Calculate your effective rate from settlement reports rather than the quoted one. Then decide whether the lender is earning its cut, because sometimes it genuinely is, and upfront payment with immediate shipment is worth real money.

If it isn't, the alternative is to stop paying a lender to sit between you and your customer. See whether Payment Plans fits your store, or install Payment Plans from the Shopify App Store.