Payment processing fees, separated from the noise

Processing is the one ticketing cost with a real external price behind it — banks and card schemes genuinely charge for moving money. That also makes it the perfect place to hide margin, because organisers assume the whole line is unavoidable. Only part of it is.

What processing actually costs in 2026

That 1.5% + 20p is the honest floor for a small UK organiser. On a £20 ticket it's 50p — under half of what many platforms bill as 'processing'.

How platforms add margin here

• Charging a flat '2.9% payment processing' regardless of card mix — pocketing the ~1.4% gap on domestic cards.
• Processing through their own merchant account and paying you later — margin plus float.
• Bundling processing into an opaque total fee so it can't be benchmarked at all.

The own-account model

Platforms built on Stripe Connect (Tickts, Ticket Tailor, TicketSource's 4.5% route) settle each sale into your Stripe account, at Stripe's published rates, as it happens. You get the real cost, immediate cash flow, and your own chargeback visibility. Platforms holding your money until after the event are choosing a different model — for their benefit, not yours.

Chargebacks and fraud, briefly

A disputed card payment costs £15–£20 in fees plus the ticket. Marketplaces absorb some of this risk; own-account models pass it to you along with the control. For most UK event profiles the fraud rate on tickets is low enough that the own-account maths still wins comfortably.