Pricing
$49 a month. interchange + 0.90% + 30¢.
That is the whole price list. There is no second page, no “contact sales”, and no tier above this one holding the feature you are about to need.
- Software
- $49 / monthPer location, USD. Unlimited staff.
- Free trial
- 30 daysNo card charged until it ends.
- Cards
- 0.90% + 30¢On top of interchange, which is passed through at cost.
- Setup, PCI, exit
- NothingThere are no other fees.
What Kessel costs
Kessel costs $49 per location per month after a 30-day free trial, with every feature and unlimited staff accounts included on the one plan. Card processing is interchange + 0.90% + 30¢: interchange is set by the card networks and passes through at cost, and the 0.90% + 30¢ is Kessel’s. Hardware is Stripe Terminal at Stripe’s price and can be bought, leased or financed, so nothing is owed on day one. There is no setup fee, no PCI fee, no statement fee, no early-termination fee and no charge for support.
30 days free — no card charged until the trial ends
Start 30 days free- Card present, online and Tap to Pay
- Register, floor plan, kitchen display and now-serving board
- Catalog, modifiers, discounts, price books and tax
- Inventory: stock ledger, purchase orders, suppliers, counts
- Double-entry ledger, real margin, and tax reporting
- House accounts, invoices, split bills and text-to-pay
- Offline register
- Square import, CSV export, API and webhooks
- Unlimited staff accounts
What it costs you, in full
- Software
- $49 per month, per location. 30 days free.
- Card processing
- Interchange + 0.90% + 30¢. Interchange is the networks’, passed through at cost.
- Hardware
- Stripe’s price. Buy it, or lease or finance it and pay nothing on the day.
- Everything else
- Nothing. No setup fee, no PCI fee, no statement fee, no early termination fee, no charge for support.
Payments are processed by Stripe and settle to your bank on Stripe’s schedule. Interchange is set by the card networks and passes through to you at cost; the 0.90% + 30¢ is ours. Send us a recent statement and we will show you the difference on your own volume.
The card rate
Two numbers, not one
You pay what the card networks actually charge, plus nine tenths of one percent and thirty cents. That is the whole card rate — no separate pricing for chip, tap, keyed or online, and no surprise line items.
A flat rate hides what you are paying
Most processors quote one blended percentage and keep the difference between that and the real cost of your card mix. A regulated debit card costs a fraction of a rewards credit card — on a blended rate you pay the same for both, and the gap is their margin.
Interchange-plus shows you both halves
Interchange is set by Visa and Mastercard and passes through to you untouched. Our 0.90% sits on top, visible, on every statement. When interchange falls, your rate falls.
It is built for a real average ticket
Every processor charges a per-transaction amount; ours is 30¢. That means the rate works hardest on a larger average sale, and a low average ticket is usually better served by our flat rate below. We will tell you honestly which one you are before you switch.
| Card type | Interchange (theirs) | Ours | You pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regulated debit | 0.05% + $0.22 | $0.66 | $0.90 |
| Consumer credit | 1.65% + $0.10 | $0.66 | $1.42 |
| Rewards credit | 2.10% + $0.10 | $0.66 | $1.60 |
Illustrative, not a quote. Interchange is set by the card networks and varies by card and how it is presented; these are typical US card-present figures. Our part — 0.90% + 30¢ — is the only number that is ours.
Blended versus interchange-plus
What a flat rate hides
You are quoted the whole bar. Where the line between the two parts falls is not on your statement, and it moves with your card mix: a debit-heavy week makes that hatched part bigger, not smaller.
Both parts are printed. When interchange falls, your rate falls, because the only piece we control is the green one and it does not move.
On your own volume
Work it out before you talk to us
Take the effective rate off a recent statement: total fees divided by total card volume. Then move the sliders.
- What you pay now
- $1,302 / month
2.89% effective on your volume.
- Kessel, all in
- $1,578 / month
Cards at about 3.40% effective, plus $49 of software. Nothing else.
a month WORSE on Kessel at this average sale, and we would rather show you that than hide it.
Break-even is an average sale of about $86.01. Above that Kessel is cheaper; below it, the fixed 30¢ costs you more than the percentage saves, and a flat rate is the better buy. That is on cards alone — you have the software line set to $0. If you pay separately for table service, team accounts, loyalty, invoices or a kitchen display, put the figure in and the break-even drops.
- Cards, extra
- $227
- Software, extra
- $49
An estimate, not a quote. It assumes your whole volume is card present, and the interchange figure above is an assumption you can change. The two numbers that are not assumptions are ours: interchange + 0.90% + 30¢ and $49 a month.
If you would rather it was simple
One rate, if that suits you better
Interchange-plus is cheaper for most merchants and it is what we quote by default. But it moves with your card mix, and some people would rather have one number they can predict. Ask and we will put you on this instead — same software, same price, same features.
- In person
- 2.60% + 30¢
- Online and keyed
- 2.90% + 30¢
- Cards issued overseas
- +2.00%
Tap, chip or swipe on a Kessel reader.
Your storefront, invoices, payment links and cards on file.
Added to whichever of the two above applies.
Why online costs more
Because it genuinely does. An online sale cannot qualify for the card-present debit rates, and the interchange we are billed is higher for it. The gap between our two rates is smaller than the gap in what we pay.
Why 30¢ and not 10¢
A card-present charge costs about 36¢ in fixed fees before any percentage — most of it the flat interchange on a regulated debit card. A processor quoting 10¢ is either making it back on the percentage or is the bank itself. We would rather show you the 30¢.
Overseas means where the card was issued
Not what kind of card it is. A foreign card costs us about two percent more in cross-border interchange and currency conversion, and the issuing country is on the transaction, so you can check every one of them. We do not surcharge rewards or business cards: nobody knows which those are until after the sale, so nobody could tell you the price in advance.
And if it is not the cheapest, we will match
Below roughly a $85 average sale, measured against a flat 2.6% + 10¢, interchange-plus usually loses to a flat rate: our 30c per transaction is a bigger share of a small ticket than the percentage we save you. It also depends on your volume, because the $49 has to come from somewhere. The calculator above works out the crossover on your own numbers — and if you are better off where you are, it says so. Send a current statement and we will meet any comparable processor’s effective rate on your real volume, or tell you plainly to stay put.
Questions
Pricing questions
What does Kessel cost, all in?
$49 a month per location for the software, free for the first 30 days. Card processing is interchange + 0.90% + 30¢, where interchange is set by the card networks and passes through to you at cost. Hardware is Stripe’s price and can be leased or financed. There is no setup fee, no PCI fee, no statement fee and no termination fee.
Does Kessel work when the internet goes down?
Yes. The register keeps selling — cash, house accounts and gift cards work fully offline, and every sale queues and reconciles when you reconnect. Card payments offline are limited by what Stripe Terminal supports, and the register tells you plainly when a sale is queued rather than captured.
Can I move my Square catalog across?
Yes. Paste a read-only key from your Square dashboard, or upload a spreadsheet — Square’s own item export works, and so does Clover’s or Lightspeed’s. Kessel brings over items, variations, categories, modifiers, taxes, discounts, stock counts and customers. You review a diff before anything is written, and the whole import can be undone for seven days.
More questions on the home page, and the full comparison set is here.
Thirty days, no card.
Import your catalog, ring a few real sales, and decide with your own numbers in front of you.