Elavon Processing Fees: A Complete Breakdown For Retailers

Elavon processing fees rarely add up to the flat rate quoted at signup. Between per-transaction markups, monthly billing charges, and add-on fees like the non-qualified volume charge, actual costs vary widely by account and pricing model.

Below, we break down each fee Elavon charges, track the rate increases from the past several years, and compare Elavon’s rates against processors like Square, Heartland, and Helcim.

You’ll also find practical steps to lower your bill and learn how your POS system determines whether you can act on any of them.

What is Elavon? A Quick Overview

Elavon is a payment processor and merchant services provider, not a point-of-sale company.

In industry terms, Elavon operates as a merchant acquirer, and the rundown on what a merchant acquirer does makes the fee breakdown below easier to follow.

Formerly known as NOVA, Elavon has been a U.S. Bancorp subsidiary since 2001 and has more than 30 years of experience in payment processing overall, is headquartered in Atlanta, and now serves over two million merchants across more than 30 countries, spanning industries from retail and restaurants to healthcare and government.

Elavon’s reputation is mixed. Merchant consultants who work with Elavon accounts regularly describe it as a solid, mid-market processor with fewer “bogus” add-on fees than some competitors, interchange-plus pricing available on request, and a willingness to negotiate.

At the same time, online complaints about held funds and abrupt account cancellations show up often enough that new merchants should factor them in before signing, and annual rate increases are close to guaranteed.

That mix of custom pricing, negotiable fees, and yearly hikes is exactly why the rest of this guide breaks the charges down fee by fee instead of quoting one all-purpose rate.

Elavon Processing Fees: The Complete Fee Schedule

Elavon does not use one fixed rate for all merchants. Pricing depends on your industry, monthly volume, card mix, and which pricing model you’re placed on, so the figures below are typical ranges rather than a universal price list.

For the mechanics behind each of these charges, from authorization to settlement, see how credit card processing works.

Two of these rows deserve extra context. The markup and bundled-rate lines both come down to how interchange fees work, the wholesale cost any processor pays the card networks before adding its own margin.

And if any of the line items above don’t match what’s on your latest bill, reading your merchant statement line by line is the fastest way to line them up.

A Note on Costco-Branded Elavon Pricing

Costco’s business membership merchant services program runs on Elavon’s processing infrastructure behind the scenes.

Costco is a referral channel, not a separate discount tier, and Elavon pays Costco a commission for each account it sends.

Going directly to Elavon typically costs the same or less than signing up through a partner marketing page.

How Elavon’s Pricing Structure Works: Tiered vs Interchange-Plus

Elavon prices merchants under one of two structures, and which one you’re on determines whether you can see what you’re actually paying.

Tiered Pricing

Tiered pricing sorts each transaction into a qualified, mid-qualified, or non-qualified bucket and charges a flat rate for that bucket, regardless of the true interchange cost underneath.

It’s the default for many small-business plans, including the bundled “starting at” rates Elavon and its partners advertise publicly, and it’s also the least transparent option: two transactions that cost Elavon the same amount at the network level can land in different tiers and get billed at very different rates.

Interchange-Plus Pricing

Interchange-plus pricing charges the actual wholesale interchange rate set by the card networks, plus a fixed markup that Elavon keeps.

Elavon’s own marketing highlights this option for its transparency, and real client accounts show markups in the 0.07%–0.35% + $0.20–$0.48 range.

Interchange-plus won’t make the monthly billing fee, non-qualified volume fee, or other add-ons disappear, but it does make the core per-transaction cost far easier to audit.

If your account was set up on a tiered plan, ask your Elavon representative to move you to interchange-plus, and weigh the new quote against our credit card processing rate comparison before agreeing to anything.

Elavon Rate Increases: A Timeline of Recent Changes

Elavon has raised its processing rates at least once a year since 2022, generally around the end of the first quarter, with the most recent increase effective February 1, 2026.

February 2026

• A per-transaction increase of 0.07% + $0.18 on all cards
• An $0.18 increase per authorization
• A $0.50 increase per settled batch
• The international card handling fee reset to 0.80%
• The monthly billing fee locked in at 0.08% of volume
• The non-qualified volume fee climbed to 0.55%

February 2025

• A rate increase reported at 0.81% + $0.25 per transaction for Visa, Mastercard, and Discover
• A $0.25 increase per authorization
• A $0.40 increase per settled batch
• A 0.60% fee on international transactions
• The non-qualified volume fee raised to 0.40%

March 2024

• A 0.10% + $0.20 increase for Visa, Mastercard, and Discover transactions
• A 0.20% increase per authorization
• A 0.30% increase for American Express transactions
• A new 0.06% monthly billing fee for merchants who stay on monthly billing
• Automatic enrollment of all merchants into Elavon’s Commercial Card Optimization program, which captures Level 2 and Level 3 data to qualify select commercial-card transactions for lower interchange. Elavon keeps 75% of the resulting savings and passes 25% back to the merchant. Visa’s CEDP program, introduced in April 2025, now requires a “verified” merchant status and accurate Level 3 data before these automatic Visa discounts apply, so the program delivers less hands-off savings than it once did.

March 2023

• A 0.07% + $0.25 increase across all card transactions
• A $0.25 increase per authorization
• A 0.60% increase on international transactions
• A $35 increase to chargeback fees
• The monthly minimum fee raised to $40
• A new $0.40 batch settlement fee
• A new monthly billing fee, introduced at 0.02% of volume for merchants on monthly billing

Earlier Changes: 2022 and Before

Increases in April 2022 varied by merchant, with some accounts moving from roughly 0.02% + $0.23 to 0.16% + $0.25 per transaction.

Elavon also began auto-enrolling select merchants into the Commercial Card Optimization program that July, and introduced a PCI DSS non-compliance fee of $84.99 per month around the same time, discounted to about $10 per month for merchants who completed their annual PCI questionnaire.

That non-compliance penalty has since settled into the $20–$80 monthly range reported in more recent account reviews.

Budget for another adjustment at your next contract review. A yearly increase, usually landing in Q1, has been the norm for several years running.

Elavon is not alone in this: Toast’s 2026 fee increase followed the same pattern, so a periodic repricing check is a smart habit no matter which processor you use.

Hidden And Add-On Fees to Watch For

Beyond the per-transaction rate, five recurring or conditional charges are the ones most likely to catch an Elavon merchant off guard, and a rising chargeback fee belongs on that list too.

Monthly Billing Fee

The charge equals 0.08% of your total monthly processing volume and only applies if you’re on a monthly billing cycle.

Moving to daily billing eliminates it, though daily billing adds its own reconciliation work for merchants used to a single monthly statement.

Non-Qualified Volume Fee

Listed on statements as OTHR NQ VOL FEE, this 0.55% charge hits any transaction Elavon deems unqualified, most often keyed-in entries or transactions missing required card data. It can land on accounts using interchange-plus pricing just as easily as tiered accounts.

PCI Non-Compliance Fee

Merchants who haven’t completed their annual PCI DSS self-assessment questionnaire pay between $20 and $80 extra a month. Fixing it just takes completing that questionnaire once a year through your compliance portal. Our PCI compliance guide for retailers goes deeper into what this requirement covers.

Safe-T SMB Fee

Merchant consultants who audit Elavon statements routinely flag this as a security-related charge with little transparent justification, and one that Elavon will frequently remove on request. If you see it on a statement, ask.

Auth/WAT Fee

The fee is tied to the telephone-line service Elavon uses to communicate with older POS terminals. Like the Safe-T SMB fee, it’s often negotiable once you push back on it directly.

How to Lower or Negotiate Your Elavon Processing Fees

Six changes can meaningfully reduce an Elavon bill without changing providers, and several of them echo the broader tactics in our guide to lowering merchant fees.

1. Switch to daily billing. Email dailydiscount@elavon.com with your merchant ID to drop the 0.08% monthly billing fee, and weigh that savings against the extra reconciliation work daily statements create.
2. Complete your PCI DSS questionnaire annually. Completing it avoids the $20–$80 monthly non-compliance fee.
3. Ask to move from tiered to interchange-plus pricing. It won't remove the add-on fees, but it makes your core transaction cost transparent and easier to audit going forward.
4. Push back on the Auth/WAT and Safe-T SMB fees specifically. Both are commonly reduced or removed once a merchant asks.
5. Reduce downgrades. Swiping or dipping cards rather than keying them in, and capturing full card data at the point of sale, keeps more transactions in the qualified tier and out of the 0.55% non-qualified fee.
6. Audit your statement at least once a year, ideally right after Elavon's typical Q1 rate adjustment, so new charges get caught and challenged before they compound for months.

If any of this pushes you toward comparing contracts elsewhere, avoiding early termination fees is worth a read before you commit to a new processor.

Elavon vs Other Processors: How The Rates Compare

Elavon's rates land in the middle of the market compared to the rest of the industry, so the table below lines it up against five other well-known processors on pricing model, typical rate, and contract terms.

Rates and fees above are current published or commonly reported figures and shift often across all six processors in this table, so double-check current pricing directly with each provider before comparing quotes.

Against flat-rate processors like Square, Elavon typically loses on simplicity for low-volume or new businesses, since a flat 2.6%–3.5% rate with no monthly fees is easier to budget around than Elavon's stack of per-transaction, monthly, and conditional charges.

At higher volumes, though, interchange-plus pricing can undercut flat-rate processors once the fixed markup is spread across enough transactions.

Against other bank-owned acquirers, reviewers generally place Elavon in line with the category: fewer outright junk fees than some competitors, offset by rate increases that land like clockwork, year after year.

If you're comparing Elavon to your current processor, remember that leaving Elavon for another provider also means replacing POS hardware and retraining staff in most cases, a cost that can outweigh a modest rate difference.

Curious how two of these stack up head-to-head? Our breakdown of Clover's rates compare to Square's has the details, or browse our roundup of cheapest credit card processing options if none of these six feel like the right fit.

How Your POS System Affects Your Processing Costs

Your POS system, not just your processor, decides how much freedom you actually have to act on the advice in this guide.

Many point of sale systems are sold bundled to a single, in-house payment processor, and leaving that processor later often means replacing POS hardware, migrating your product and sales data, and retraining staff on new software at the same time.

If the line between these two roles has always felt blurry, POS vs payment processor lays out where one ends and the other begins.

That bundling is what turns a rate increase into a bigger decision than it needs to be. If your POS and your payment processing are tied together, negotiating with Elavon, moving to a different processor, or splitting payment volume across two processors to keep leverage all become harder, and sometimes impossible without a full system replacement.

Processor-agnostic POS software removes that constraint, since it plugs into any third-party payment processor instead of one built-in option.

KORONA POS, for example, is built to work with the merchant's choice of processor rather than requiring a proprietary one, so a rate increase, a fee dispute, or a better offer from a competing processor can be acted on without touching the POS system running your store.

Before signing a long-term POS contract, it's worth asking directly whether the system requires a specific processor and what the hardware or migration costs would be to switch processors later.

Frequently Asked Questions About Elavon Processing Fees

What is Elavon's Monthly Fee?

Elavon charges a monthly service fee between $9.95 and $29.95 depending on account type, plus a separate 0.08% monthly billing fee unless you move to daily billing. Both charges apply whether your sales that month are high or low.

Does Elavon Charge a Cancellation Fee?

Elavon's contracts generally skip the early termination fee and liquidated damages clause that some processors charge, according to merchant-consultant reviews, though equipment you're renting may still cost you something on the way out. Check your own paperwork before counting on a clean exit.

Is Elavon a Good Payment Processor?

Elavon suits merchants who negotiate interchange-plus pricing and keep a close eye on their statements, but it's rarely the cheapest option and tends to raise rates annually. Look at a current statement before treating any quote as the final number.

How do I Lower my Elavon Processing Fees?

Moving to daily billing gets rid of the monthly billing fee, staying current on your PCI DSS questionnaire keeps the non-compliance charge off your bill, and asking your rep for interchange-plus pricing tackles the core rate. Negotiating the add-on fees directly tends to work fastest.

What is Elavon's Non-Qualified Volume Fee?

Elavon adds a 0.55% surcharge, shown on statements as OTHR NQ VOL FEE, whenever a transaction lands outside your account's qualified tier. Interchange-plus accounts aren't exempt from it either.

Is Elavon the Same as US Bank?

Elavon is a separate company but wholly owned by U.S. Bancorp, the parent of U.S. Bank. Merchant statements and contracts come from Elavon directly. Its financial backing and much of its infrastructure still trace back to the bank.