Most food distributors track cost of goods, labour, and fuel to the dollar. Few ever calculate what their payment processor takes off the top of every invoice they collect. On $5M in B2B payments, a 2% fee is $100,000 a year. Here is how to run that number for your own business, and what to look for if it comes back too high.
A percentage fee does not care whether your margin is 8% or 22%. It comes off the top of every invoice, every month, and it climbs automatically as you grow.
That is the part most owners miss. You negotiate hard on product cost and freight. The payment fee just sits in the background, quietly indexed to your success.
Run the numbers at three revenue levels and the pattern is hard to unsee.
Annual payment fees at a 2% effective blended rate and at a standard 2.9% card rate, across $2M, $5M, and $10M in B2B payments collected.
| B2B payments collected | 2% effective (blended) | 2.9% card rate |
|---|---|---|
| $2M | $40,000 | $58,000 |
| $5M | $100,000 | $145,000 |
| $10M | $200,000 | $290,000 |
At $5M, a 2% effective rate blended across card and transfer is $100,000 a year. At a standard 2.9% card rate, it is closer to $145,000. Double your volume to $10M and the fee doubles with it. Nothing about your service improved. The bill simply went up.
These are not projections. They are arithmetic.
The headline rate is only half the story. What matters is how the fee is structured, because the structure decides how fast the cost climbs.
Card processors such as Stripe[1] and Square[2] publish rates of roughly 2.9% to 3.3% per online transaction. Wholesale marketplaces charge a commission on orders placed by buyers who discover you through their platform, currently as high as 15%,[3] with payment processing on top. A marketplace commission pays for buyer discovery, which is a different job than collecting payment from customers you already have.
A flat fee per transaction breaks the link between your revenue and your payment cost. Collect more, raise the invoice size, and the fee per payment does not move.
Percentage pricing was designed for consumer checkout, where the average order is small and the volume is high. Food distribution is the opposite.
A consumer retailer might run a $50 sale and pay about $1.45 in card fees. A distributor collecting a $2,000 B2B invoice pays roughly $58 on that single payment. Collect 430 invoices a month and the dollar figure stops looking small very quickly.
The rate looks identical on paper. The dollar impact is not.
Here is the straight version, because it matters when you compare options.
Card payments always carry the card networks' cost. Whoever processes your Visa and Mastercard transactions, you pay a percentage in that range. Moneris publishes about 2.85% plus $0.30 for online card payments.[5] That is the cost of accepting a card, with anyone.
What you can control is whether a platform adds its own percentage on top of that, and whether you have a flat-fee option for the payments that do not need a card at all.
Look for a payment setup that takes no percentage of your invoice as a platform fee, and that offers a flat-fee rail, such as a bank transfer at a fixed cost per payment, for the bulk of your B2B collections. WEGOPay, the payment module inside the WEGOTRADE platform, is one Canadian example: card payments run at the processor's standard Moneris rate with no added platform percentage, and bank transfers are a flat fee per transaction rather than a slice of the invoice.
Even at a fair rate, the payment is only part of what collections cost you. The other part is time.
A documented study of a Quebec independent food distributor handling about 430 orders a month on QuickBooks Online found 292 hours a year going to accounts receivable: sending reminders, matching payments to invoices, chasing late accounts, re-keying records by hand. At a loaded labour rate near $30 an hour, that is about $8,800 a year, on top of whatever the processor takes.[7]
Online payment that ties to the invoice and reconciles straight into your accounting system is what makes those hours disappear. The rate matters. The hours matter just as much.
In 2026, Shopify made its foundational B2B features free on every plan, and more food suppliers now run wholesale ordering on Shopify.[6] Shopify steers those merchants to Shopify Payments, which charges 2.5% to 2.9% plus $0.30 on every transaction. Use a different payment gateway and Shopify adds a platform fee of 0.5% to 2% on top.
It matters for one reason. That percentage scales with every dollar you collect, so the more you sell, the more the platform takes. The standard for B2B food commerce is moving toward faster ordering, faster payment, and lower friction. Every dollar lost to an avoidable fee, and every hour lost to manual collections, is margin your competitors may not be giving up.
Before your next contract review, put these four questions to your current processor, or to any option you are weighing.
If your processor cannot tell you your effective rate for the last 12 months in under ten minutes, that itself is an answer.
Pull your last three months of processing statements. Add up the fees. Divide by the payments you collected. That is your real effective rate, and it is usually higher than the headline number you were quoted.
If you want to model it against a flat-fee setup, WEGOTRADE publishes an ROI calculator at wegotrade.com, and the team will run your specific volume with you. If the math does not work for your operation, they will tell you that too.
Q: What do B2B card payments cost in Canada?
A: Online card processing generally runs about 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction with Stripe,[1] and 3.3% plus $0.30 on Square's free plan,[2] per their 2025 to 2026 public pricing. Moneris publishes about 2.85% plus $0.30 for online card payments.[5] On $5M in B2B payments, a 2.9% rate works out to roughly $145,000 a year.
Q: How do wholesale marketplaces compare on fees?
A: Wholesale marketplaces typically charge a commission of up to 15% on orders placed by buyers who discover you through their platform,[3] plus payment processing fees of roughly 1.9% to 3.5% depending on payout speed.[4] A marketplace commission is priced for buyer discovery, which is a separate value from collecting payment from your existing customers. Orders from customers you bring to the platform yourself typically carry 0% commission, though processing fees still apply.
Q: What is the alternative to a percentage fee?
A: A flat fee per transaction. Instead of a slice of every invoice, you pay a fixed amount per payment, so the cost does not climb as your revenue or invoice size grows. Card payments still carry the processor's standard rate, but a platform that adds no percentage of its own, and offers a flat-fee bank transfer rail, removes the percentage from most of your collections.
Q: How does WEGOPay charge for B2B payments?
A: WEGOPay is the payment module inside the WEGOTRADE platform. Card payments are processed through Moneris at Moneris's standard Canadian rates, with no added WEGOTRADE percentage. Bank transfers are a flat fee per transaction rather than a percentage of the invoice. Payments reconcile back into your accounting system, including QuickBooks Online, SAP, Acomba, Sage 300, and others.
Q: How much can switching actually save?
A: It depends on your mix of card and transfer payments and on your volume, so the straightforward answer is to run it on your own statements. At $5M in collections, the gap between a 2% effective fee ($100,000 a year) and a flat-fee transfer rail is wide enough to be worth ten minutes with a calculator.
Q: How many hours does manual accounts receivable actually take?
A: A documented study of a Quebec independent food distributor handling about 430 orders a month found roughly 292 hours a year on accounts receivable, about $8,800 in loaded staff time, separate from any processing fees.[7] Online payment with automatic reconciliation removes most of that work.
Q: Does Shopify's move into B2B affect Canadian distributors?
A: Shopify made foundational B2B features free on every plan in 2026, so more suppliers will sell wholesale there.[6] The catch is the payment model. Shopify steers merchants to Shopify Payments at 2.5% to 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction, a percentage that grows with every order you collect. The competitive pressure is real, and distributors evaluating their payment setup should account for it.
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