# The second bill: what payment processing really adds to your ticket sales — MijnEvent

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# The second bill: what payment processing really adds to your ticket sales

 When comparing ticketing platforms, organisers look at the platform fee. But there is a second bill: the cost of the payment itself. What it is, how it adds up, and why it scales with orders rather than tickets.

 MijnEvent · 3 August 2026 · 8 min read 

  ![](https://regify-mijnevent.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/blog/covers/betaalkosten-bij-ticketverkoop-de-tweede-rekening.webp)  Photo: [Nathana Rebouças](https://unsplash.com/@nathanareboucas?utm_source=MijnEvent&utm_medium=referral) / [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=MijnEvent&utm_medium=referral)     In short

- On top of the platform fee you always pay your payment service provider; with MijnEvent you pay Mollie directly at Mollie's own rate, with no platform mark-up in between.
- Payment costs scale with the number of orders, not the number of tickets — one order for four friends costs the same as a single ticket.
- For an event with 500 tickets at € 25, the total bill (platform fee plus payment costs) comes to roughly € 335, against € 1,000 at a platform charging 8%.
- Dutch and EU rules ban surcharges on iDEAL | Wero, SEPA transfers and direct debits, and consumer Visa or Mastercard payments; a flat service fee per ticket that is independent of the payment method is allowed.
- Apple Pay and Google Pay have no rate of their own: they follow the card behind them, count as card payments in your budget, and fall under the same surcharge ban.

  Organisers comparing ticketing platforms usually line up the fees. That makes sense: it is the number on the website. But anyone who puts the bank statements next to the budget after the event often finds a second bill that was never in the comparison: **the cost of the payment itself**.

Those costs are neither large nor shocking. They are predictable, though, and that is exactly why it pays to work them out properly once. Then you know in advance what you keep, and you can stop thinking about it while the stage is going up.

# Two bills, not one

Selling tickets online means paying two parties:

1. **The ticketing platform** — for the software: the event page, the checkout, the tickets, the scanning at the gate.
2. **The payment service provider (PSP)** — for actually processing the payment. That party maintains the connections to banks and card schemes, and charges per successful transaction.

Many platforms glue the two together into a single percentage: "8% all in". That reads nicely, but it hides which part goes to the software and which to the payment — and therefore how much mark-up sits on top of those payment costs. You get one number and no visibility.

At MijnEvent the two bills are deliberately kept apart. Payments run through **your own Mollie account**, so you are Mollie's customer and you pay the rate *you* agreed with them. We are not in between and we add no mark-up. Our own fee is a flat amount per paid ticket, regardless of the ticket price — more on that in [Selling tickets without high commissions](/en/blog/sell-tickets-without-high-fees).

# What a payment costs

Mollie publishes its rates openly on [Mollie's pricing page](https://www.mollie.com/nl/pricing). At the time of writing they look like this:

MethodRate per successful transactioniDEAL | Wero€ 0.32SEPA bank transfer€ 0.25SEPA direct debit€ 0.35Bancontact€ 0.39Visa / Mastercard (consumer, EEA)1.80% + € 0.25Visa / Mastercard (commercial, EEA)2.90% + € 0.25Visa / Mastercard (non-EEA)3.25% + € 0.25American Express2.90% + € 0.25Klarna (NL/BE)2.99% + € 0.45PayPalPayPal's fee + € 0.10Apple Payrate of the underlying cardGoogle Payrate of the underlying cardThe pattern matters more than the exact amounts: **Dutch and European bank methods cost a flat amount per transaction, while cards and buy-now-pay-later cost a percentage.** On a € 200 order, iDEAL | Wero still costs € 0.32; the same order paid by credit card costs € 3.85.

## Apple Pay and Google Pay: no rate of their own, but their own behaviour

Strictly speaking, Apple Pay and Google Pay are not payment methods but **wallets**: there is an ordinary Visa, Mastercard or Maestro behind them, and that card sets the price. If a Dutch visitor pays with a consumer Visa inside Apple Pay, you are charged 1.80% + € 0.25 — exactly as if they had typed the card number in. If the wallet holds a commercial or non-EEA card, that higher rate applies. In your Mollie overview the transaction therefore usually appears under "card", with the wallet as a detail.

That has three practical consequences:

- **In your budget they count as card payments**, not as an extra cheap route. If you want to estimate wallets separately in the worked example below, simply add them to the credit card line.
- **You may not surcharge them** when an ordinary consumer Visa or Mastercard sits behind them. The wallet does not change the card, and so it does not change the surcharge ban either — see the section on passing costs on further down.
- **They are your best friend on mobile.** Most ticket sales now happen on a phone, and a checkout you complete with Face ID or a fingerprint is abandoned far less often than a form asking for sixteen digits. The extra cost compared to iDEAL | Wero is small; an abandoned order costs you the whole ticket.

For a Dutch audience iDEAL | Wero remains the cheapest and most-used route. Apple Pay and Google Pay are mainly worth having for visitors from abroad and for the mobile impulse purchase — switch them on in your Mollie dashboard and let the buyer choose.

A note for readers outside the Netherlands: iDEAL is the dominant Dutch bank-transfer method — roughly comparable to Bancontact in Belgium — and it is merging into the European Wero scheme, which is why Mollie now lists it as "iDEAL | Wero". If most of your audience is Dutch, that flat € 0.32 is what your payment costs will largely consist of.

Which methods you switch on is up to you and lives in your Mollie dashboard; [Supported payment methods](/en/blog/supported-payment-methods) explains how. Always check your own agreement, though: Mollie negotiates different terms at higher volumes, and the figures above are the public standard rates.

# A worked example: 500 tickets at € 25

Take a festival day with **500 paid tickets at € 25** — € 12,500 in ticket revenue. Visitors buy 2.5 tickets at a time on average, so that is about **200 orders** of € 62.50 each. Say nine in ten orders are paid with iDEAL | Wero and one in ten by credit card:

- **iDEAL | Wero:** 180 × € 0.32 = **€ 57.60**
- **Credit card:** 20 × (1.80% of € 62.50 + € 0.25) = 20 × € 1.38 = **€ 27.60**
- **Payment costs together: ± € 85** — 0.7% of revenue
- **MijnEvent platform fee (Pay as you go):** 500 × € 0.50 = **€ 250**
- **Total: ± € 335**, or 2.7% of your ticket revenue

At a platform charging 8%, the same € 12,500 costs you **€ 1,000**. Even if payment costs are included there, a gap of over € 650 remains — money you could put into a better PA system.

The nice thing about a flat amount per ticket is that you can earn it back precisely if you want to. [Can you earn back the cost of your ticketing system?](/en/blog/earn-back-your-ticketing-costs) covers the donation field and service fees that let you do that.

# Payment costs scale with orders, not tickets

This is the insight most budgets miss. **The platform fee follows the number of tickets; payment costs follow the number of orders.** One order containing four tickets costs exactly as much to process as a single ticket.

Run the same event again, but with everyone buying separately — 500 orders of € 25:

- iDEAL | Wero: 450 × € 0.32 = € 144.00
- Credit card: 50 × (1.80% of € 25 + € 0.25) = 50 × € 0.70 = € 35.00
- **Payment costs together: ± € 179** — more than double

That is no reason to force anything, but it is a reason to make buying together the obvious option: one link you drop in the group chat, no one-ticket-per-order limit, and a checkout where four tickets go through in a single step.

Three things that push payment costs up further:

- **Expensive tickets combined with cards.** A percentage on a € 150 ticket adds up; iDEAL | Wero stays at € 0.32 for the same ticket.
- **Visitors from outside the EEA.** A card issued outside the European Economic Area costs 3.25% instead of 1.80%. At an international conference that shows.
- **Refunds and chargebacks.** A cancellation does not only reverse the ticket money; a [chargeback](https://help.mollie.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001470869-What-is-a-chargeback) comes with costs of its own. Your Mollie overview shows exactly what.

# May you pass those costs on?

Partly — and the boundaries are sharper than many organisers assume. According to [the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets](https://www.acm.nl/nl/concurrentie-en-marktwerking/concurreren-en-samenwerken/concurrentie-het-betalingsverkeer/betaalmogelijkheden-en-betaalkosten-winkels), which enforces the Dutch implementation of the EU payment services rules, **no surcharge** may be charged for:

- debit card payments;
- credit cards from a four-party scheme, such as Visa and Mastercard;
- transfers within the SEPA area — which includes iDEAL | Wero;
- direct debits within the SEPA area.

That ban looks at the card, not at the button used to pay: a consumer Visa or Mastercard paid through **Apple Pay or Google Pay** falls under it just the same.

A surcharge *is* allowed on commercial cards, three-party cards such as American Express and Diners Club, and on PayPal. Even then the rule holds that you may never charge more than the actual cost you pay yourself, and the buyer must know before they purchase.

In practice, a per-method surcharge is fiddly and unattractive for a ticket shop. The cleaner route is a **flat service fee per ticket** that is independent of the payment method — that is not a payment surcharge, and you set it per ticket type in MijnEvent. One caveat: unavoidable costs must be part of the total price you display, and payment fees must be shown separately ([ACM on displaying prices](https://www.acm.nl/nl/verkoop-aan-consumenten/consumenten-informeren/prijzen-vermelden)).

# Keeping it manageable

Four things that make the most difference in practice:

1. **Budget on orders, not just tickets.** Estimate your average order size; that number drives your payment costs.
2. **Let iDEAL | Wero do the work.** In the Netherlands the vast majority of orders go there anyway, and it is the cheapest route.
3. **Switch cards on when your audience needs them.** For an international crowd they are essential; for a village festival with no foreign visitors they add little.
4. **Ask your current platform for the breakdown.** If all you get is one all-in percentage with no substantiation, you do not know what you pay for software and what for payments. That in itself is information.

Payment costs are not something to lose sleep over — at a normal Dutch ticketed event they stay below one percent. They are something you should know, because only then can you compare platforms honestly.

Curious what your event would cost on MijnEvent? Our [pricing is simply public](/en/pricing), flat per-ticket fee included, and you can [register your organisation in a few minutes](/registreer) — connecting your own Mollie account happens in the same wizard right after.

   Frequently asked questions

## Frequently asked questions

## What does an iDEAL | Wero payment cost?

  Mollie's public pricing page lists € 0.32 per successful iDEAL | Wero transaction — a flat amount, whatever the order is worth. A card payment from a European consumer costs 1.80% plus € 0.25. What you actually pay is set in your own Mollie agreement.

## Are payment costs included in the MijnEvent platform fee?

  No, and that is deliberate. Payments run through your own Mollie account, so you pay Mollie directly at the rate you agreed with them. MijnEvent charges a separate flat fee per paid ticket. Two bills, both traceable.

## What do Apple Pay and Google Pay cost?

  They have no rate of their own. Behind a wallet payment sits an ordinary Visa, Mastercard or Maestro, and that card sets the price — an EEA consumer card therefore costs 1.80% plus € 0.25, the same as a typed card payment. In your budget you count wallets with the card payments. On mobile they often deliver noticeably more completed orders.

## Can I pass payment costs on to my visitors?

  Not as a surcharge on iDEAL | Wero, SEPA transfers, SEPA direct debits or ordinary consumer Visa and Mastercard payments — that is prohibited. You may charge a service fee per ticket that is unrelated to the payment method, as long as it is visible before checkout.

  [    Back to blog ](https://mijnevent.nl/en/blog) 

  MijnEvent

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