Transaction Fees
A transaction fee is the amount charged to move a payment. Who gets it depends on the rail. On cards it goes to the processor and its partners. On Bitcoin it goes to miners for block space. On the Lightning Network it goes to the routing nodes that forward the payment.
How each fee is set
Cards. A percentage plus a fixed amount per charge. Stripe's published price is 2.9% + 30 cents. International cards add 1.5% and currency conversion adds another 1%, so a converted cross-border charge reaches 5.4% + 30 cents (figures from Stripe's pricing, as cited in the Amboss post of 13 July 2026).
Bitcoin on-chain. The fee depends on the size of the transaction in bytes and on how busy the network is. When blocks are full, fees rise and confirmations slow down. A routine on-chain transaction ran around 3 sat/vByte, or roughly $0.30 to $0.90, according to the Amboss post of 9 July 2026, which cites live mempool data.
Lightning. Each routing node sets its own fee: a small base fee plus a rate on the amount forwarded, usually quoted in parts per million (ppm). Because off-chain payments do not compete for block space, they are not hit by on-chain fee spikes. They can still fail when channels on the route run out of liquidity, which is why route choice matters.
Crypto payment gateways. Most major gateways land between 1% and 3% of the all-in cost once deposit, withdrawal and conversion fees are added, according to the Amboss comparison from June 2026. See Crypto Payment Gateway Fees.
Fee examples from Amboss data
- In October 2022, Amboss noted that a deposit to Bitfinex over Lightning without a direct channel should expect about 1,000 ppm, or 0.1%, in fees.
- Amboss states that network routing fees on its payments are typically a fraction of a cent per payment.
- In January 2026, Amboss said that liquidity providers on Rails were driving processing costs as low as 0.29% in optimized setups.
Small payments and congestion
Fixed fees make small payments uneconomical. A percentage plus 30 cents is large on a one-dollar payment. Low routing fees make a micropayment practical. Congestion has the opposite effect on-chain: when many people compete for block space, fees go up for everyone.
Fee optimization
Lower fees depend on the route. Picking channels with the right fees and enough liquidity cuts cost and failed attempts. See fee optimization.
How Amboss handles transaction fees
Amboss Payments settles over Lightning. Pricing for businesses is tailored to payment volume and business requirements, so there is no public rate card. Because payments settle straight to the merchant's wallet, there is no gateway holding funds, and the network fee is the routing fee described above. See Amboss Payments.
On the other side of the market, Amboss Rails lets owners of Bitcoin and stablecoins deploy them into Lightning nodes. Rails earns yield from routing fees and liquidity leases, and the owner keeps custody. In other words, the fee a business pays for routing is revenue for the node operators who supply the liquidity.