Stripe Fees Beyond 2.9%?

Memberships & subscriptions
1

Can anyone clarify what fees are incurred with Stripe for the following use cases on Ghost?

  • monthly/yearly subscriptions
  • tips/one-time contributions
  • sale of digital downloads

I reached out to Stripe customer service, and they provided me with as much information as they could, but they said to get clarity from Ghost support.

"The pricing fee of 2.9%+30c is only for domestic charges and applies to your local customers. If you have international customers using international cards, there will be an additional fee of 1.5%.

"However, when using one-time Invoices to collect payments, there is an additional fee of 0.4% per Invoice on top of the transactions fees.

"When we receive a request from Ghost to charge a customer, we process the transaction and charge your account with the transaction fees.

"But, if their integration creates an Invoice and Subscription with Stripe, that’s when the Billing and Invoicing fees apply on top of the transaction fees.

"It will depend on how Ghost integration works but I’m afraid this is not something I can confirm directly on my end due to our limited visibility with third-party integrations.

“When getting in touch with Ghost, you can ask if their integration with Stripe creates a Stripe Invoice and/or Billing Subscriptions for every request. Some third party applications generate an Invoice and Subscription using their application alone, and ONLY involve Stripe to collect charges. This is something you can clarify with Ghost.”

What is this invoicing process for payment, does this happen at all with the Ghost integration, and should I expect to incur it for any of the use cases detailed above?

Thank you so much!
Clara

2

[I’m not the Ghost team, just a power user and occasional open-source contributor.]

I went back and looked at a $1000 subscription for a US-based client. (I’m in the US.) I paid $29.30, which is consistent with the listed 2.9% plus 30c.
I also looked at an international client. It worked out to 4.4% plus 30c, which is consistent with the extra 1.5% for international, plus 2.9% and 30c.

Ghost doesn’t support digital downloads directly. If you’re doing something like adding a payment link on your Ghost site, that’d be covered by Stripe’s payment link pricing.

TL;DR: I don’t see evidence of subscription payments triggering anything except the base fee and international fee.

I don’t have enough experience with the new built-in tip and donations feature, but I’ve been using Stripe (with a link on a page) for donations and I don’t see any extra fees there, either.

2 Likes
3

Thank you so much for looking back on your transactions to verify the fees! I really appreciate it.

And yes, regarding digital downloads, in the future my plan would be to follow the advice you offered here: Selling digital downloads - #2 by Cathy_Sarisky

If I go with #1, it would still be the same fees as before? Or would this then trigger that additional 0.4% invoicing charge? I’m not totally sure I understand from Stripe’s (or Ghost’s) documentation how exactly that charge would ever get triggered with the Ghost integration to be honest.

4

The default Ghost subscription process does not trigger an invoice that includes the 0.4% charge.