Is monthly flat fee really better than per transaction for low volume stores? I keep seeing conflicting advice.
I've been reading through a bunch of threads here and on other forums about pricing models, and I feel like everyone just picks a side and runs with it. For my small side hustle (I sell handmade guitar straps at local craft fairs maybe 8 times a year, pulling in around $400 per event), I keep seeing people say go with a flat monthly fee to save money. But when I actually crunched the numbers on a Square reader versus a traditional merchant account with a $25 monthly minimum, the flat fee would eat up like 6% of my sales during slow months. Meanwhile the per transaction guys say I'm overthinking it and just paying an extra 50 cents per swipe matters more to me than a big monthly bill. I had a guy at a vendor meetup in Portland last fall swear his monthly plan saved him $300 a year, but he was doing $12k a month in sales at a food cart. So what's the real cutoff point where one option clearly beats the other? Has anyone actually done the math on their own numbers and switched?