RO Engine
The Shop Owner's Fact Sheet — Sourced & Dated

Follow the Card Fees: How Shop Software Makes Its Money

Payment processing has become one of the biggest businesses for the software companies that serve small shops — sometimes bigger than the software. Here is what the public record shows, with a link for every figure so you can check it yourself.

Published by RO Engine · Sources checked September 26, 2026 · Every figure links to its source

The biggest cost most shops never negotiate

Fact 1 — Industry Data (Nilson Report)
U.S. merchants paid $198.25 billion in credit and debit card swipe fees in 2025 — $118.8 billion of it on Visa and Mastercard credit cards alone.
Source: Nilson Report figures, as published by the Merchants Payments Coalition (a merchant trade group), March 18, 2026. The 2024 figures were $187.2 billion and $111.2 billion (March 18, 2025).

Merchants have been in federal court over these fees since 2005. In June 2024, U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie rejected a proposed settlement, writing that its estimated $6 billion in annual savings was “paltry compared to the $100 billion that merchants paid in interchange fees on Visa and Mastercard transactions in 2023.”

Fact 2 — Federal Court Record
In November 2025, Visa and Mastercard agreed to a revised settlement that the merchants' economists value at about $38 billion in fee reductions through 2031. A federal judge granted preliminary approval in June 2026; final approval is pending.
Sources: In re Payment Card Interchange Fee and Merchant Discount Antitrust Litigation, No. 05-md-1720 (E.D.N.Y.) — Memorandum & Order denying preliminary approval, June 25, 2024; Visa Inc. Form 8-K, November 10, 2025; Reuters, November 10, 2025; Payments Dive, June 2026.

Visa and Mastercard have not admitted wrongdoing, and no court has found that they violated antitrust law. The settlement lowers fees; it is not a cash payment to merchants.

Those fees don't only go to the card networks and the banks. More and more, a share goes to the software company whose screen the payment runs through.

Exhibit A: a public company's audited numbers

Fact 3 — Public Company Filing (Form 10-K)
In 2025, Toast earned $1.15 billion in gross profit from payment processing and related financial products — more than the $672 million it earned from software subscriptions.
Source: Toast, Inc. Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, February 18, 2026.
Toast, Inc. — fiscal 2025RevenueGross profit
Subscription software$936 million$672 million
Financial technology (mostly payment processing)$5,037 million$1,146 million
Hardware and professional services$180 million−$220 million

Gross profit here is each line's revenue minus its cost of revenue, as reported in the 10-K (Toast does not total it by line). Toast reports payment revenue before paying interchange and network fees, which is why that revenue figure is so large; gross profit is the fairer comparison.

Toast sells to restaurants, not repair shops. We use it because it is a public company, so its numbers are audited and published. It shows how the model works: the hardware is sold at a loss, and payments bring in more gross profit than the software.

Exhibit B: the same model, in auto repair

The large auto repair platforms are private, so they don't publish their numbers. Here is what they and their investors do say in public.

Fact 4 — Investor's Own Portfolio Page
Tekmetric's growth-equity investor, Susquehanna Growth Equity, lists among its work with the company: “Transformed payments offering by negotiating credit card tiers, developing merchant migration strategy, and exploring integrated finance product offerings.”
Source: Susquehanna Growth Equity, Tekmetric portfolio page (investment year listed as 2021). Susquehanna's case study with Stripe says it “helps entrepreneurs understand and build the business case for embedded payments”; Tekmetric's own Stripe case study says its payments run on Stripe Connect, which moves money “between car owners, repair shops, and Tekmetric.”
Fact 5 — Independent Research Estimate
Sacra, an independent research firm, estimates that on an average shop's $720,000 in annual sales, Shopmonkey “can earn up to $18k per year in payment processing revenue from each customer.”
Source: Sacra, “Shopmonkey revenue, funding & growth rate”. This is Sacra's estimate, not a figure Shopmonkey has published. It applies a 2.5% processing fee to total shop sales, so most of that amount goes to card networks and banks, not to Shopmonkey.

Both companies sell integrated card processing alongside the software. Neither publishes its processing rates:

Published September 26, 2026TekmetricShopmonkey
Software, per month$179–439$215–499
Card processing rates“Transaction fees vary” — schedule a demo“Call for Pricing”
Surcharging (passing card fees on to your customer)Not mentioned on its payments pageListed as a feature
Fact 6 — Venture Capital Research
Andreessen Horowitz, a venture firm that invests in software companies, wrote that adding payments can “increase revenue per customer by 2-5x,” and that a vertical software company “can typically capture up to 1.75% on transactions.”
Source: a16z, “Fintech Scales Vertical SaaS”, August 4, 2020.

None of this is illegal, and none of it tells you what any one shop pays. It tells you where the money is — and why a low software price is worth a second look at the processing agreement that comes with it.

What to ask before you sign

Whatever software you use, get these answers in writing:

On $1,000,000 a year in card sales, every half a percentage point is $5,000 a year.

Simple arithmetic, not a quote — your rate depends on your card mix, ticket size and processor. For reference, Stripe's standard U.S. pricing is 2.9% + 30¢ online and 2.7% + 5¢ in person.

Where RO Engine stands

RO Engine doesn't take a cut of your card processing. Our revenue is the subscription: $349 a month, flat — no tiers, unlimited users, everything on from day one, including 300 AI phone minutes, 300 calls and 1,500 texts. Which processor you use, and what you pay it, is between you and your processor.

We built RO Engine's AI service-recommendation engine because we run a real repair shop and needed it ourselves first. That's the pitch. Your card volume isn't part of it.

90-Day Free Trial. 25% Off For Founding Shops.

Join before July 1, 2027 and your rate locks at $261.75/month for as long as you stay — down from $349/month standard. No tiers, no contracts, unlimited users.

Start Your Free Trial →
No contract. No cut of your card processing. No per-user fees.

Sources, in full

RO Engine is not affiliated with Toast, Tekmetric, Shopmonkey, Susquehanna Growth Equity, Sacra, Visa, Mastercard or Stripe; their names and marks belong to them. Figures are taken from the public sources linked above as they read on September 26, 2026. Prices and terms change — check the current version before relying on any of them. Spot something wrong or out of date? Email joe@roengine.com and we'll correct it.