Gravity Payments Review: Pros, Cons, Pricing and Complete Statement Audit (2025)

Gravity Payments is a Seattle-based payment processor that was founded in 2004. For a smaller processor, Gravity is well-known due to its successful PR and marketing tactics.

They made big headlines years ago when the founder and former CEO Dan Price announced that he was raising the company’s minimum wage to $70,000 for every employee—while simultaneously slashing his compensation from $1.1 million to $70,000.

Over the years, Gravity has made some acquisitions and launched additional products, including a legal SaaS platform and even software for bridal stores. 

But the focus of this review will be on Gravity’s payment processing services. So whether you’re considering Gravity Payments to accept credit cards or currently using Gravity Payments and want to see if you’re getting a good deal, this in-depth review has everything you need to know as a merchant. 

MCC Quick Take on Gravity Payments

We have several clients currently using Gravity Payments, and overall, we’ve had a generally positive experience working with them. Pricing is solid, and we don’t typically see price gouging or anything too egregious.

They are mainly an ISO of Fiserv—and practically all of the statements we audit use Fiserv on the backend. 

But they’re also continuing to expand and partner with other softwares, similar to Clearent, and that’s really the direction in which the entire payments industry is trending right now.

What We Like About Gravity Payments

• Interchange-plus pricing is available (and that’s mostly what we see).
• Rates are fairly competitive.
• We rarely come across tiered pricing, which is more expensive for merchants.
• Monthly statements are very transparent, with a full breakdown of every fee.

Drawbacks of Gravity Payments

• They increase rates about twice per year, typically on the same schedule as Fiserv.
• These increases are usually just 10 basis points (0.10%), but they add up over time if you’re not staying on top of it. 
• Flat-rate pricing is promoted on Gravity’s website, and some sales reps will try to get less knowledgeable businesses on this plan.
• Some contracts include early termination fees.

Gravity Payments Pricing and Credit Card Processing Rates

Gravity Payments has flat-rate pricing that starts at 2.5% + $0.10 per transaction. 

While this rate is lower than other flat-rate providers that typically start around 2.9% + $0.30, it’s worth noting that this rate only applies to qualified in-person transactions. So you’re not going to get this if you have an ecommerce store or if you’re accepting in-person payments through an integrated software solution. 

We don’t recommend flat-rate pricing for Gravity Payments or any other processor for that matter.

Since we know from personal experience that Gravity offers interchange-plus pricing, do whatever you can to get that deal. This is the most transparent, gives you room for negotiation, and it’s the best way to optimize your processing rates. 

As always, with IC+ deals, your exact rate is going to vary based on your volume and other factors, like custom software requirements and other services.

For example, we have a client that processes $140,000 per month via Gravity, and their effective rate is around 2.2% (which includes all of the interchange fees, assessments, and Gravity’s markup). Another client processes roughly $50,000 monthly, and their effective rate is 2.38%. 

Other Gravity Payments Fees to Look Out For

Unlike other processors, Gravity Payments doesn’t charge a ton of extra hiddens fees (at least on the statements that we review).

Some examples of fees you might find on your statement include:

• Batch Fees — $0.10 to $0.20 per batch
• Gateway Fees — $0.10 to $0.25 per transaction
• Datawire Fees — $0.08 to $0.25 per transaction
• Compliance Fees — $14.65 to $25 per month

Since Fiserv handles the backend processing for Gravity Payments, it’s also common for us to see fees that are normally found on Fiserv’s statements. You can check out our Fiserv review for more information about those. 

A Closer Look at a Gravity Payments Merchant Statement

Understanding how to read your merchant processing statement is so important. One of my favorite parts about Gravity Payments is that their monthly statements are super detailed.

While this may seem overwhelming for the average business, it’s actually great news because it’s transparent, and you can identify where every cent is coming from.

We’ll quickly go through some key sections so you can get a better idea of exactly what you’re looking at.

Page 1 Summary

The first page of every statement has your merchant ID number and a quick summary of your monthly processing figures, which you can use to quickly calculate your effective rate. 

It’s fairly self-explanatory at a high level but doesn’t quite tell the full story of your fees.

Summary by Card Type

Next, Gravity gives you a full breakdown of your processing volume by card type. This includes credit networks and debit networks. 

These numbers are important for two reasons. First you can use this information as a way to potentially optimize your rates. If you see that a high percentage of your sales are coming from a certain type of card that’s cheaper to process (like a debit card), then you may want to work with Gravity to try and lower your processing costs for those types of transactions.

But it’s also a good idea to use this summary to check your math and ensure everything adds up correctly.

If we look at the total amount submitted in the bottom right corner of this summary, we see this merchant submitted $146,254 in sales for this period.

Now if we subtract that number from the total fees in the page 1 summary ($3,206.66), we get $143,047.34—which matches the total deposited line that’s also in the page 1 summary.

Don’t dismiss checking this simple math. While the numbers normally balance, we’ve caught processors putting numbers on statements that don’t actually add up properly (see my Shift4 review for a recent example of this).

Amounts Funded by Batch

Gravity Payments also gives you a complete breakdown of your batch summary per day. Here’s an example of what this looks like:

This particular merchant submits two batches daily, one for each location.

Again, we can double-check some quick math here and see that all of the numbers are still balancing ($146,254 submitted, $3,206.66 fees, and $143,047.24 funded). 

Pretty straightforward.

Fees Charged

Now for the granular details. The Fees Charged component of your statement goes through every single penny and where it comes from.

What’s important to understand about this part of your statement is that it’s a mix of processor fees (charged by Gravity) and interchange fees charged by the card networks.

This is just a portion of one page of fees, but this particular statement has fees spread across three full pages. So there’s a lot to dive into.

But in short, everything is segmented by network and then the DISC 1 number represents the baseline discount rate charged by Gravity, plus other fees.

If we go to the very bottom of the fees section, we’ll see the grand total—which should match the same figure that we’ve seen on other parts of the statement so far.

There it is again—$3,206.66, which checks out.

But we still haven’t seen a grand total of what you’re actually paying directly to Gravity Payments. 

And I’ll let you in on a secret, that number isn’t actually anywhere on the statement. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s just how processors operate.

Fortunately, you can still figure out this number by doing some quick math using the information in the next section. 

Interchange Charges and Program Fees

The final portion of your statement includes every interchange category for the entire month, which is somewhat repetitive to the previous section—except here, you’re only looking at fees charged by the card networks as pass-through fees (none of these charges are directly from Gravity).

There’s a lot to uncover here, and I’m not going to go through line-by-line right now. 

But you can check some quick numbers against the previous fees section to see what you’re looking at. 

For example, if we look at the Amex total of $3,874 in sales and $102 in fees, you can find those exact same numbers in the Fees portion of the statement that I covered earlier. 

Scroll up, and the $3,874 is actually the very first number under the Volume column, and the $102 fee is a few lines down as a Program Fees line item. 

But the most important part of this section is at the bottom, where you can see the total interchange fees you paid for the statement:

This merchant paid $2,677.57 in interchange fees.

Now we can finally figure out Gravity’s markup fees by subtracting this number from the total fees ($3,206.66) to determine that Gravity took $529.09 in total fees.

$529 on $146,250 in sales is actually a pretty good deal. It comes out to a 0.36% markup. 

While this definitely isn’t the cheapest rate we’ve ever seen, it’s solid. And it’s great that we can audit an entire statement with transparent numbers to get this result.

Our Final Thoughts on Gravity Payments

Gravity Payments is an above-average payment processor. They offer competitive rates and we haven’t caught them doing anything deceptive when we’re auditing statements. 

Just be prepared for at least one or two rate increases a year. While the hikes are marginal, they can add up quickly, so do whatever you can to push back against them before your rates get out of control.

I also really appreciate how detailed and transparent Gravity’s statements are. I’ve audited thousands of statements throughout my career, and it’s honestly shocking how bad some processors are when it comes to reporting. But Gravity’s statements have everything you need to truly understand your costs, including what you’re paying in interchange fees and what you’re paying directly to Gravity.

If you have any questions about your Gravity Payments statement, contact our team here at MCC. We can take a closer look and identify any cost savings opportunities for you.

Conversely, if you’re currently using another payment processor and thinking about switching to Gravity Payments, I strongly advise you to take a closer look at your existing situation first. Changing processors is more expensive than you realize, and you may not even save money in the long run. We can audit your statements as well to look for potential savings so you can reduce your rates without having to switch.