How Sympli5 works
What Sympli5 is
Sympli5 is a data repository. We aggregate the published fee schedules and documented availability of payment gateways, wallets, bank acquirers and instant payment rails across 118 currencies, and we add a calculation layer (effective rates, fee caps, international surcharges, rankings) on top. We are not a payments consultancy, we are not affiliated with any provider, and we do not give financial, tax, or legal advice (see the disclaimer).
Where the numbers come from
- Official pricing pages only. A provider's rate enters our tables only if it appears on the provider's own published standard schedule (pricing page, fee schedule, or API fee documentation). Every provider entry links to that source.
- No invented numbers. Providers that price per merchant, interchange-plus, or by quote (Adyen, Helcim, Powertranz, dLocal, EBANX and others) are marked custom pricing with their pricing model explained. They never appear in fee tables or calculator rankings, because any single number for them would be fiction.
- Availability from documented markets. Which providers serve which countries comes from their own documented market lists, not assumptions. When coverage is unclear, the entry says so.
How the data is maintained
- One dated source of truth. All fee data lives in a single versioned data file. Every page displays the dataset's last-updated date, and every figure can be traced back to it.
- Quarterly review. The dataset is checked against every provider's pricing page on a quarterly cycle, and a weekly automated scan watches for fee changes, availability moves and tax developments between reviews.
- Flash between reviews. Fee changes, launches and tax developments are published on Flash as dated, sourced entries, each labeled by status: proposed (not yet law), enacted, rate change, or availability. A proposal is never presented as a done deal.
What we calculate, and what we quote
Everything labeled as a calculation is arithmetic on published fee components: percentage + fixed fee, fee caps applied where providers publish them, and international-card surcharges applied when you enable them. The effective rate (total fee as a percentage of the transaction) is our own derived figure, which is why it can look different from any provider's headline. Monthly plans, setup fees, taxes charged on the fee itself, chargebacks and FX margins are excluded from per-transaction math and disclosed separately. Results are estimates for comparison, not quotes.
Corrections
If a figure on any page is wrong or stale, tell us with the page and, ideally, a link to the provider's official schedule. Corrections are our highest priority: we verify against the source, fix the dataset, and the page's last-updated date changes with the fix. Our correction history is visible in the dated Flash feed and the site changelog.
Attribution and copyright
Fee figures and availability facts come from the providers' official pages, and we link to them. All wording, comparisons, calculations and data structure on this site are our own; we do not reproduce provider marketing text. Provider names and trademarks belong to their respective owners, and listing a provider is not an endorsement. Small extracts of our data may be reused with attribution and a link; bulk republication requires permission (see contact).
What this site is not
- Not financial, tax, or legal advice, and we never recommend a specific provider.
- Not a workarounds guide: we list what is available in each market, not how to circumvent provider availability rules.
- Not real-time: fee schedules change frequently, and our numbers carry dates precisely so you can judge freshness yourself.