Safepay fee breakdown

Our founding principle is to be completely transparent about our pricing model with our merchants. Across all our payments channels and including all of our supported currencies, we charge the same transaction fee. In the interest of transparency, we are providing the community with a breakdown of Safepay's fees. We believe that in the long run this is a small price to pay for accepting major forms of payment from customers worldwide. We guarantee that there are no hidden fees, no yearly fees and no minimum balance to maintain in order to use Safepay.

Here is the breakdown of our transaction fee:

Card based payments

The fee that Safepay charges per transaction is based off of the expense Safepay has to bear for multiple business partners and stakeholders to carry out your transactions successfully. We charge 2.9% + Rs30 (Exclusive of tax).

The fee that Safepay charges is further broken down into the following heads:

Cybersource fee (USD): Cybersource fee is on a API call level. Every API call that is made to carry out a transaction has a payable charge to it which is beared by Safepay. This mean even in cases of failed transactions, Safepay will be charged.
Card Scheme fee (USD): Card scheme (Visa/Mastercard) charges us on two levels:
1. Per transaction fee
2. Quartely BIN usage fee (Bank charge for sponsoring BIN)
Payment processor fee (USD): Payment processor charges us with slab rates where there is a fee associated with transaction volume. Each transaction has a fee that the payment processor charges and is payable by Safepay.
Merchant settlement bank: The merchant settlement bank (bank that settles merchants their amount) has a certain percentage that they deduct per transaction.
Interchange fee: Interchange fee is charged by card schemes based on the type of card used by your customer. This fee changes per card.
Tax: Safepay is responsible to pay tax on all the payments it make to its business partners plus any revenue generated. Safepay tax breakdown is given below:
1. Non-resident tax: This is the tax we pay on invoiced payments to our Non-resident (Out of Pakistan) business partners like Cybersource.
2. Resident tax: This is the tax we pay on invoiced payments to our resident(in Pakistan) business partners like Euronet (payment processor) and UBL.
3. FED/Sales tax: This is the tax we pay on the fee that we charge per transaction

Bank based payments

Our charge per successful transaction is 2.5%

1.5% - To the acquiring bank, the issuing bank and networks used when your customer pays through Safepay
0.2% - Taxes due to federal and provincial tax authorities
0.8% - To support our development and service for you

How this works

Merchant is paid Rs10,000 by a customer through Safepay. The fee payable to Safepay will break down to be 2.5% of Rs 10,000. This is Rs 250.

The merchant will receive a net amount of Rs 9,750 (Rs 10,000 - Rs 250) from the original transaction. This will be deposited directly in your Linked Bank Account according to our settlement time line (the number of days it takes for the Rs 9,750 to reach your Linked Bank Account).

For local transactions in Pakistani Rupees (PKR)

This is inclusive of all taxes and duties including taxes that depend on which province a merchant is based in:
- Sindh (Sindh Sales Tax on Services Act 2011): 15%
- Punjab (Punjab Sales Tax on Services Act 2012): 16%
- Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Sales Tax on Services Act,2022): 15%
- Balochistan (Balochistan Sales Tax on Services Act, 2015): 15%
- Federal territory (Islamabad Capital Territory (Tax on Services)Ordinance, 2001): 15%

Example: How the Safepay fee includes taxes

SST (Sindh Sales Tax on Services) is payable to the Sindh Revenue Board (SRB) in connection with the provision of Safepay Services. The Safepay fee you pay is inclusive of SST. For many other internet payment gateways in the market, FED is passed on to the merchant. You should always check if the rate quoted to you by an internet payment gateway is inclusive or exclusive of FED. In this example, we will charge SST.

Currently SST is charged at 15%. Because Safepay pays this on a merchant's behalf, the rate we charge may seem higher than those of our competitors.

If Safepay did not charge SST, using the same example above, the fee payable to Safepay would reduce by Rs 30 to Rs 220 - which is a rate of 2.2%.