Best payment processor for ecommerce: 7 options compared

The best payment processor for ecommerce gets a card through your checkout safely, keeps your PCI work small, screens out fraud, and bills repeat customers on schedule, at a price you can read line by line on your statement. That matters more each year: the Census Bureau estimated e-commerce at 17.1% of total US retail sales in the second quarter of 2026, seasonally adjusted (US Census Bureau). Clearo Payments publishes this list and ranks itself first on the criteria below. For the other six companies on this ecommerce list, every fact is drawn from their own websites and was checked in October 2026.

New to selling online? Start with our guide on how to accept payments online.

How we chose the best payment processors for ecommerce

Online sellers have particular needs, so we ranked on these five:

1. Pricing you can check: interchange-plus, so the card-not-present interchange on every online sale passes through at cost and the markup appears as a separate line.
2. Terms you can leave, meaning no long-term contract and no cancellation fee.
3. A named person to call when a payout is held or a dispute lands.
4. Proof before you switch: a free statement review that prices your last month on the new terms.
5. Checkout that fits a store: hosted checkout or gateway integration, fraud screening, and recurring billing.

Some sellers will weigh these differently. A developer who wants fraud screening, subscription billing and invoicing tools from one provider should read Stripe's entry. A merchant whose whole store runs on Shopify should read Shopify Payments. An established business that wants negotiated pricing or Interchange++ should look at PayPal Braintree and Adyen, and a store that already has a merchant account and needs a gateway for it should read Authorize.net.

After Clearo, entries are ordered by how closely each company's own pages match these criteria; the summary below is as of October 2026.

1. Clearo Payments

Why Clearo ranks first

Online stores get all five criteria from Clearo: interchange-plus pricing, no long-term contract or cancellation fee, a dedicated rep, a free statement review, and a checkout setup made for selling online. Our online payments offer hosted checkout or gateway integration, with fraud screening that uses AVS, CVV checks and velocity rules. When a payout looks short or a chargeback lands, you call your dedicated rep, who already knows your store.

How the pricing works

Every online sale carries card-not-present interchange, which the card networks set and which runs higher than in-store categories. Interchange-plus passes that cost and the network fees through as charged, and our margin sits on its own line of the statement. You can check the interchange against Visa's published schedule, see exactly what we added, and notice right away if anything changes. Our pricing page walks through the model, and network costs and our margin never get folded into one percentage.

What you get

For the store itself, you can use hosted checkout, where customers enter card details on a hosted page instead of your site, or gateway integration if you'd rather build your own checkout. Fraud screening with AVS, CVV checks and velocity rules is part of our online payments. For sales outside the cart, our virtual terminal handles payment links, invoices and recurring billing. We also provide PCI compliance support and chargeback management tools, plus same-day or next-day funding options. Our page for ecommerce businesses shows how the pieces fit.

Switching

The free statement review prices last month's sales on interchange-plus before you change anything. Based on its client records, Clearo says businesses moving from flat-rate pricing have saved 20 to 50% on processing costs. For an online store the result depends on card mix, average order size and volume, so the review uses your numbers rather than an average. There's no long-term contract or cancellation fee, your dedicated rep is your contact from the start, and Clearo says setup takes under 48 hours.

If you want a store builder with payments built in, or one software platform for payments, subscriptions and invoicing, some of the entries below may suit you more.

2. Helcim

Helcim is a payment processor for US and Canadian businesses that offers online payments with no monthly fees, a fit for online stores that want interchange-plus pricing without a long-term contract. Its pricing is interchange plus, and its pricing page lists no long-term contracts, no cancellation fees and no setup fees.

Best for: online stores in the US or Canada that want interchange-plus pricing without a long-term contract.

3. Adyen

Adyen is a payments company that prices Visa and Mastercard on Interchange++ in its US listings, which suits businesses that want card costs broken out transaction by transaction. Its pricing page says each transaction carries a fixed processing fee plus a fee determined by the payment method, lists rates for the US and Canada, and says Adyen charges no monthly, setup, integration or closure fees.

Best for: businesses that want Interchange++ card pricing, with fees broken out by payment method and no closure fees.

4. Stripe

Stripe is a payments company that offers Radar for fraud prevention, Stripe Billing and Stripe Invoicing, worth a look for online businesses that want those tools from one provider. Its US pricing page says there are no setup or monthly fees and no closure fees on standard pricing, and its Radar rules guide describes rules that fraud teams can set.

Best for: online businesses that want fraud screening, billing and invoicing from one provider on standard pricing.

5. PayPal Braintree

PayPal Braintree is the Braintree payments service under the PayPal brand, a fit for established online businesses that want pricing set around their volume. According to its US fees and pricing page, established businesses can get custom flat rates, interchange-plus pricing or discounted rates, depending on business model and processing volume, alongside the standard pricing listed there.

Best for: established online businesses that want custom or interchange-plus pricing based on volume.

6. Authorize.net

Authorize.net offers an eCommerce payment gateway for online stores, so it suits sellers that have a merchant account or plan to open one; per its support article, that account must come from a Merchant Service Provider in the United States or Canada. Its Fraud Detection Suite includes transaction filters, and its pricing page lists Automated Recurring Billing with no separate setup or monthly fee.

Best for: online stores with a US or Canadian merchant account that want a gateway with fraud filters and recurring billing.

7. Shopify Payments

Shopify Payments is the payment option built into Shopify's commerce plans, made for merchants who run their store on Shopify. Shopify's pricing page lists third-party transaction fees that vary by plan and don't apply to orders processed through Shopify Payments, along with built-in fraud analysis, and its Plus plan help page lists pricing in USD for the United States and CAD for Canada.

Best for: merchants selling on Shopify who want payments and fraud analysis built into their Shopify plan.

Hosted checkout or your own payment form: which should your store use?

Use a hosted checkout unless you have a strong reason not to. When customers type their card details on your provider's page, card data never touches your website, and that keeps your PCI work small. PCI SSC's SAQ A, the shortest self-assessment questionnaire, is meant for card-not-present merchants that fully outsource card handling to PCI DSS validated providers (PCI SSC).

The embedded row changed recently. Since March 31, 2025, SAQ A has asked merchants to confirm their site isn't susceptible to attacks from scripts that could affect their e-commerce systems, and a PCI SSC FAQ says that check applies to sites that embed a payment form, not to plain redirects (PCI SSC). Build your own form and you move to SAQ A-EP, which covers sites that don't receive card data but can affect the payment's security (PCI SSC); let card data reach your servers and you're in SAQ D (PCI SSC). Our guides to the hosted payment page and the payment gateway go deeper.

How do you keep online fraud and chargebacks down?

Layer your checks, because no single tool stops everything. Remote card fraud grew as chip cards spread: the Federal Reserve found it rose from $3.4 billion in 2015 to $4.6 billion in 2016, the same period in which in-person card fraud fell from $3.7 billion to $2.9 billion (Federal Reserve). A fraudulent online order usually comes back to the store as a chargeback.

• Address and security code checks. Visa's acceptance guide describes the Address Verification Service as a way for card-absent merchants to check the cardholder's billing address with the issuer (Visa).
• 3-D Secure. EMVCo describes EMV 3-D Secure as a tool to help prevent card-not-present fraud (EMVCo). Under Visa Secure, a successfully authenticated sale protects you from fraud-related disputes, and so does an attempted authentication where the issuer or cardholder doesn't take part (Visa).
• Velocity limits. Visa's guidance on card testing recommends velocity checks on low-amount and authorization-only transactions, plus limits on how many cards can be added per account and per session (Visa).

Our guides to ecommerce fraud prevention, 3D Secure and card testing fraud cover each tool in detail.

What does an ecommerce payment processor cost?

You pay three layers on every online order: interchange, card network fees, and the processor's markup, plus any gateway, chargeback or currency fees in the contract. Online sales sit in higher interchange categories than in-person ones. On Visa's schedule effective April 18, 2026, a standard consumer credit card in the "all other products" group carries 0.38 percentage points more interchange when it isn't present than when it's dipped or tapped (Visa).

Here's what that looks like with made-up numbers. Say a coffee roaster in Portland, Oregon sells $30,000 a month through its website, all on cards in that group. The card-not-present premium comes to about $114 in interchange for the month, before anyone's markup. That cost exists with every provider; what changes is whether you can see it. On interchange-plus it appears line by line, while a flat rate folds it into one percentage. Our comparison of interchange-plus vs flat rate runs the math at other order sizes.

Subscriptions add one more lever. Visa Account Updater exchanges account number changes, new expiration dates and closed-account notices among participating issuers, acquirers and merchants (Visa), so fewer renewals fail when a customer's card is replaced. Ask whether your processor supports it.

How do you choose a payment processor for your online store?

Get answers to these questions in writing before you sign:

1. Which checkout options do you support, and which PCI questionnaire would we file with each?
2. Are AVS, security code checks, 3-D Secure and velocity limits included, or extra?
3. How do you handle recurring billing, and how do you record each customer's consent to store their card? Visa's stored-credential framework requires that consent (Visa).
4. When do payouts arrive, and could you hold or reserve part of them?
5. How long is the contract, and is there a cancellation fee?
6. Who do I call when a payout is late or a chargeback arrives?

Think about how your store will grow, too. Picture a skincare brand in Miami that starts with one-off orders and adds a monthly subscription box a year later. A processor that handles recurring billing and card updates from day one saves a painful migration of stored cards later. Our guide to the ecommerce merchant account covers what underwriters check for online stores, and our list of the best merchant account options compares the account side. For phone and email orders that skip the cart, see the best virtual terminal roundup.

Your next step

If your store already takes cards, your last statement shows what online sales really cost you. Send it for a free statement review and we'll show your effective rate next to what the same month would cost on interchange-plus pricing. Launching a new store? Contact us and a rep will help you pick the checkout setup that keeps your PCI work and fraud risk down.