Costs and pricing
Part of Ecommerce platform costs: a whole-life budget that separates cash, accounting and economic cost
Ecommerce refunds: what happens to the original card fee
Ecommerce platforms: Shopify Payments, Square and WooPayments records say the original card processing fee is retained when a merchant refunds a payment.
For an England seller, ecommerce platforms differ in how payment fees, refunds and disputes affect a transaction’s recorded cost. A refund may return the customer’s money while leaving the original processing fee in place; a dispute may add a fee or change the settlement.
This article follows those entries for Shopify Payments with Shopify Basic, Square Online Free and WooCommerce with optional WooPayments. The comparison concerns one seller of its own physical goods to UK adults, using one successful online card payment as the starting transaction.
Why a refund does not necessarily reverse the payment cost
Keep the customer refund separate from the processing fee charged on the original payment. The records reviewed for Shopify Payments, Square and WooPayments all say that the original processing fee is not returned when the merchant refunds a payment. A refund therefore does not, by itself, show the net cost of the transaction.
The reviewed comparison does not establish a separate fee for initiating a refund. It establishes how the original processing fee is treated, not whether a provider might charge another kind of fee in a particular account or circumstance. Do not record an unverified refund charge—or assume there is none—as a settled item.
Disputes need their own entries too. The supplier records describe different treatments: Shopify’s dispute consequences are configuration-specific in this comparison; Square states there is no dispute-management fee for chargebacks, while funds and processing fees depend on the outcome; WooPayments has a dispute fee that is returned if the challenge is won. The hosted-subscription model is one route to ecommerce services, but the entries below concern what happens to payment costs after a transaction.
Payment and refund entries by route
| Route | Plan and payment charges in the reviewed record | Refund treatment | Dispute treatment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify Basic with Shopify Payments | Basic is GBP 25 per month on monthly billing, or GBP 19 per month billed yearly, with a one-year billing commitment on the yearly figure. Shopify Payments’ standard online UK-card rate is 2% plus GBP 0.25 per successful transaction. International and Amex online cards are 3.1% plus GBP 0.25. A 2% third-party transaction fee is listed for Basic when applicable. | The original Shopify Payments card fee is not returned after a merchant refund. Shopify’s refund guidance supports this treatment. | The reviewed record does not establish one universal dispute consequence; it is configuration-specific. Check the applicable account record rather than assigning an assumed fee or credit. |
| Square Online Free | The plan has a GBP 0 monthly subscription. The online rate is 1.4% plus GBP 0.25 for each UK-card transaction, or 2.5% plus GBP 0.25 for a non-UK card. | Square retains the processing fee when a merchant refunds a payment. | Square states there is no dispute-management fee for chargebacks. Funds and processing fees depend on the outcome. |
| WooCommerce core with optional WooPayments | WooCommerce core is supplier-described as free; hosting and extensions are separate. WooPayments has no setup or online-payment monthly fee stated. For a UK WooPayments account, the card base fee is 1.5% plus GBP 0.25; an international payment adds 2%, and currency conversion adds 2%. | WooPayments transaction fees are not returned on refunds. | The WooPayments dispute fee is GBP 15 and is returned if the challenge is won. The supplier says 20% VAT applies to fees unless a valid VAT number qualifies for zero rating. |
The supplier records do not make Shopify’s or Square’s plan-invoice VAT basis clear enough for a final budget. That is separate from the WooPayments statement about VAT on its fees. This comparison does not determine a merchant’s own tax treatment.
Reconcile each payment event, not just the order total
Link the original payment, any refund and any dispute to the same order or processor reference, but keep them as distinct entries. For each event, record the amount, the provider’s fee or adjustment, and the related settlement entry. This lets the merchant distinguish what was refunded from what the provider retained, charged or later credited.
For a refund, retain the original processing-fee entry even when the customer’s payment is returned. For a dispute, record the fee or adjustment separately from the original sale and refund.
In particular, do not mark WooPayments’ GBP 15 dispute fee as returned merely because a challenge is expected to succeed: the record says it is returned if the challenge is won, so reconcile the credit when it appears. With Square, the absence of a dispute-management fee does not establish the final treatment of funds or processing fees; those depend on the outcome.
Keep successful UK cards, other cards, refunds, disputes and currency conversion separate when reconciling against provider and merchant records. If an entry cannot be matched, leave it identifiable as unresolved rather than folding it into a general fees total. The records do not establish a universal Shopify dispute result, so leave that item account-specific until the relevant provider record and settlement are checked.
Unpriced work beyond the payment event
The payment figures do not describe the full cost of operating each route. Shopify’s remaining unpriced items in this comparison include labour, apps, migration, assurance, fulfilment, support and exit. Square’s include labour, integrations, assurance, support, fulfilment, migration and complete exit evidence. WooCommerce core being free does not price hosting, maintenance, extensions, labour, backups, assurance, support or exit.
These are different responsibilities as well as different charges. A payment rate or a zero-monthly subscription does not show who will do the work or what that work will cost for a particular merchant. Nor do the reviewed records provide amounts for these dependencies. Keep them visible as unknowns rather than estimating them from the plan or payment fee.
What the ledger can—and cannot—settle
The comparison can identify specified fee treatment: the original processing fee remains after a refund on all three routes; Square’s dispute-management fee and outcome treatment differ from WooPayments’ stated dispute fee; and Shopify’s dispute consequence remains configuration-specific here. It cannot forecast how many refunds or disputes a seller will have, calculate that seller’s total costs, or settle an account-specific outcome not established in the records.
There was no purchase, account access or hands-on test, and the records are supplier statements rather than independent performance findings. Keep unresolved or configuration-dependent entries open until merchant records support them. The review methodology explains why a material unknown should not be treated as settled evidence.
