Stripe International Card Fees Explained

What is the Stripe international card fee?

When a customer pays with a card issued by a bank outside the US (or outside your Stripe account's country), Stripe charges an additional 1.5% cross-border fee on top of the standard processing rate.

For a US account, a domestic card is typically 2.9% + $0.30. An international card adds 1.5% cross-border on top — before any currency conversion. The $0.30 fixed fee stays the same.

What counts as an "international" card?

The fee applies when the card-issuing bank is in a different country than your Stripe account. For a US Stripe account:

• →A UK customer paying with a Barclays card → international fee applies
• →A US customer traveling abroad, paying with their Chase card → no fee (card is US-issued)
• →A Canadian customer paying with an RBC card → international fee applies
• →A US customer with a card issued by a foreign bank → international fee applies

The determining factor is where the card was issued, not where the customer is currently located or what currency they're paying in.

How to find international card charges in your data

In your Stripe Balance CSV export, international card transactions are identified by the text [international] appearing in the description field. For example:

To quantify the impact manually: filter your CSV for rows containing "[international]", sum the fee column for those rows, and compare to what the fee would have been at the domestic rate. The difference is your annual international card surcharge cost.

feeauditor.com does this automatically — it identifies high-fee international card charges, calculates the excess fee, and estimates your annual savings opportunity if you shifted those transactions to cheaper payment methods.

How much is this actually costing you?

It depends on what percentage of your customers are international. Some rough math:

At $500k/year volume, multiply by 5. At $1M/year, multiply by 10.

How to reduce international card fees

• Offer local payment methods in Europe

  SEPA Direct Debit costs 0.8% capped at €5 — there's no cross-border surcharge because it's a bank transfer, not a card. For European B2B customers paying recurring invoices, this can cut fees by 80%.

• Use iDEAL for Netherlands customers

  iDEAL is the dominant payment method in the Netherlands and costs a flat €0.29 per transaction regardless of size. For a €100 payment, that's 0.29% vs roughly 4.7%+ with an international card in Euro.

• Enable BECS Direct Debit for Australia

  For Australian customers, BECS Direct Debit is 1.75% capped at $3.50 AUD — cheaper than international card processing for most transaction sizes.

• Set up a local Stripe account

  If you have significant volume in one country, setting up a separate Stripe account in that country eliminates the cross-border fee for those customers entirely. This adds operational complexity but can be worth it at scale.