On The Wire · 2026-09-13 · 6 min
"Cards cost 2%. A2A costs 0.5%. Therefore A2A is cheaper." That comparison is correct and almost useless. It measures the one line a merchant can see on a statement. Run the whole number on a €10 million European merchant. Direct card fees: €90,000. Then the costs that never reach the processor's invoice. Chargebacks: €8,750 across 250 disputes and 125 hours of staff time. Fraud tooling, 3D Secure and manual review: €35,000. PCI compliance: €7,400 to protect card data the merchant never wanted to hold. Reconciliation: €13,200 for seven hours a week matching batches to settlements. Float: €3,425 on 2.5 days of money in transit. That is €157,775, or 1.58% of revenue. Already double the headline. Then the line nobody invoices. Fraud filters reject roughly 1.5% of legitimate transactions. On €10 million that is €150,000 of sales that never happened. No fee attached, no line item, no owner. Total economic impact: €307,775. 3.08% of revenue. The same merchant on A2A: €50,000 in fees plus €6,380 in everything else. No interchange, no scheme fees, no PCI scope, no false positives, no float. 0.56%. Nobody runs 100% A2A, and any comparison that assumes it is selling something.
A2A vs Cards: Cost and Feature Comparison - Full Episode | On The Wire80 / 100E-commerce Checkout Optimization: Beyond Card Payments - Full Episode | On The Wire79 / 100Merchant Integration: From Zero to Live in 2-4 Weeks - Full Episode | On The Wire48 / 100Merchant Integration: From Zero to Live in 2-4 Weeks - The Briefing | On The Wire40 / 100The Business Case for Banks to Offer A2A Payments - Full Episode | On The Wire49 / 100