Clover Fees: What Clover Charges, and What Was Added Before It Reached You
Clover publishes its prices. Five plans, plainly, on its own website, topping out under $90 a month. The company that actually sold you the terminal is bound by none of them, and on published reseller pricing the same restaurant software runs to $354 a month on a thirty-six month term.
Start with who actually sold you the terminal
Almost every question we get about Clover fees is really a question about a company whose name the merchant cannot remember. Clover is software and hardware, owned by Fiserv, and the fees on a Fiserv platform follow the same pattern this page describes. The merchant account that moves your money is a separate product, and in most cases it was sold to you by a third company entirely: an independent sales office that buys wholesale and prices retail.
That structure decides everything else on this page, and it is why Clover fees are so hard to pin down. It is why two restaurants running identical Station Duos can be hundreds of dollars a month apart with neither of them being billed incorrectly. It is why calling Clover support about your rate goes nowhere. And it is why the prices on clover.com, which are real and published and reasonable, may bear no relationship to the invoice in front of you.
Clover fees and merchant account fees arrive as one bill and are set by two different companies. Merchants who treat them as a single thing negotiate with the party that cannot help them, and never call the party that can.
Clover publishes its price. That is rarer than it sounds.
We are hard on this company in our Clover rating, so let us be equally clear where it earns credit. Clover puts real numbers on its own website, which most of the processors on the Processor Scoreboard still refuse to do. Those published Clover fees are the benchmark for the rest of this page.
| Plan | Published monthly software fee |
|---|---|
| Clover Payments | $0 |
| Clover Essentials | $14.95 |
| Counter Service Restaurant | $59.95 |
| Retail Growth | $84.95 |
| Table Service Restaurant | $89.95 |
| Each additional device, same location | $14.95 |
Clover processing fees are published alongside them: 2.6% + 10c for card-present sales on the entry plans, 2.3% + 10c on the higher tiers, and 3.5% + 10c for keyed and card-not-present transactions across the range. That per-item charge is the Clover transaction fee most merchants are hunting for. Hardware is sold outright: roughly $49 for a Clover Go, $699 to $749 for a Flex, $849 for a Mini, $1,799 for a Station Solo, $1,899 for a Station Duo.
Those are Clover’s prices for a Clover account. Hold on to them. Everything that follows is about the distance between that column and your statement.
The same software, four times the price
Clover devices reach merchants through a large independent sales channel, and those partners set their own Clover fees. Published third-party pricing guides list restaurant Clover packages at $135 to $354 a month on thirty-six month terms, against a top published direct plan of $89.95 with no multi-year software commitment.
Monthly software, on a 36-month term, listed by a third-party pricing guide for a full-service restaurant Clover package. Clover’s own published price for full-service restaurant software is $89.95 a month, cancellable.
When we scored Clover we went looking for the limit on that. Fiserv’s reseller programme advertises pricing flexibility to its partners. What it does not publish is any ceiling on it. No disclosed pricing limits. No fee-disclosure requirement. No stated audit rights over what partners charge. Flexibility is a recruiting feature when you are signing salespeople. It is the entire problem when you are the merchant at the other end of it.
This is the same structure we describe in Your ISO Has No Record: the company whose name is on your equipment is frequently not the company setting your rate, and the company setting your rate has no public track record you can look up.
About these figures. Clover’s direct plan prices, processing rates and hardware prices are the company’s own published figures as reported in late 2025 and may since have changed. The reseller range is drawn from published third-party pricing guides, not from an agreement we have reviewed, and reseller pricing is not standardised. Treat it as an illustration of the spread rather than a quote.
If you hold a Clover reseller agreement showing something different in either direction, send it and we will publish the correction.
The monthly fee is never one fee
Merchants ask whether Clover charges a monthly fee. It does, on most plans, and the published figure is small. The trouble is that Clover fees on a statement are almost never the published figure. The number on the statement is usually four or five charges wearing one name, and they belong to different companies with different amounts of leverage over you.
- CLOVER SOFTWARE PLAN. Clover’s own charge, and the one the published price actually covers.
- ADDL DEVICE FEE. Also Clover’s, and repeated for every extra terminal at the location.
- EQUIPMENT LEASE. Usually a separate finance company that has nothing to do with Clover or your processor.
- PCI PROGRAM FEE. Set by whoever sold you the merchant account.
- MONTHLY MINIMUM. Charged when your processing does not reach a floor written into the agreement.
- STATEMENT FEE. A billing charge for producing the bill you are reading.
- NON-COMPLIANCE FEE. Applied when a PCI questionnaire lapses, and often never removed once it is.
Only the first two lines are Clover’s. The lease is typically a third party’s. The rest belong to your acquirer or the office that sold you the account. Each additional Clover POS terminal at the same location adds its own line, so a Clover POS monthly fee at a three-till restaurant is three charges, not one.
Take the whole column, not the discount rate. Total fees charged divided by total card volume processed is your effective rate, and it is the only number that survives contact with a sales pitch. Include the software line, the device lines, the lease, the minimum, the PCI programme fee and every assessment. If the result is sitting near or above Clover’s own published card-present pricing, you are paying full retail sticker plus a markup, on hardware you may already own outright.
The year Clover added fees, and the year it gave them back
If your Clover fees moved between 2024 and 2026 and nobody explained why, this is the reason, and it is not a matter of interpretation. The company said it out loud, in public, to its own investors.
Under chief executive Frank Bisignano, Fiserv pushed hard for growth at Clover. “We’re all gas, no brake on this baby,” as he put it. Bloomberg later reported that leadership “started loading up the product with a slew of fees as part of its so-called ‘value-added services’ for merchants.” Around 200,000 merchants were migrated off older Payeezy software onto Clover, and a significant number of them left for competitors shortly afterwards.
Merchants moved off Payeezy onto Clover. Departures for rivals followed the migration.
The bill came due in late 2025. Fiserv cut its full-year outlook, the shares fell 44 percent in a single day, and roughly $30 billion of market value went with them. Incoming chief executive Mike Lyons said the company had found its problems were “largely driven by our own doing,” and set about undoing the pricing Clover had introduced. On the third-quarter call, management said the fees being removed “don’t feel appropriate.” The finance chief put the cost of the reversal at roughly six percentage points of growth in the following quarter.
Of quarterly revenue growth surrendered to remove fees the company’s own leadership described as inappropriate. That revenue came out of merchant accounts. Nobody sent those merchants a refund notice.
The story has not settled. Lyons left for Truist and Takis Georgakopoulos became chief executive, which is three chief executives in roughly eighteen months. Clover revenue grew 2 percent in the second quarter of 2026, and management confirmed the fourth quarter is where the 2025 pricing reversals stop weighing on the comparison. The policy that governs your statement has changed hands three times in two years. A merchant who has not re-read their own bill since 2024 is working from an agreement that no longer describes what is happening to them.
What to do with that. Put a statement from 2024 beside your most recent one and read them line for line. Note anything that appeared, disappeared, or quietly changed name. Given what the company has said publicly about that period, the difference between those two pages is the most informative document you own.
Leaving Clover means leaving three contracts, not one
Merchants searching for a Clover cancellation fee are usually reading the wrong document. Clover’s own software terms are among the better ones on our board. The expensive paper is underneath.
| The contract | Who holds it | Where the exit cost is |
|---|---|---|
| Clover software plan | Clover and Fiserv | One-year term with a 30-day exit. Genuinely better than most of this board, and rarely the problem. |
| Equipment lease | A separate finance company | Frequently pre-printed “non-cancelable”, commonly 36 to 48 months, payable in full on exit. Usually the largest number. |
| Merchant processing agreement | Your acquirer or the reseller | Early termination fee, liquidated damages, auto-renewal windows. Often unnamed in the copy you were shown. |
One thing to do today. Find the lease. Not the Clover plan, not the processing agreement. The lease. Check the term length, check whether the number of months was written in by hand, and put the end date in your calendar with a reminder 120 days ahead of it. Auto-renewal on these agreements is the most expensive paperwork failure we see, and a calendar entry prevents all of it.
Clover arrives under a great many names
One reason merchants cannot find who to call is that the Clover on the counter and the name on the debit are rarely the same word. Depending on how the account was sold and who underwrites it, the descriptor pulling money out of your bank can be the reseller’s trading name, the acquiring bank’s, a legacy First Data or Fiserv string, or a leasing company you have never heard of. It is the same problem behind the Elavon service fee, where the name on the charge and the company that set it are not the same business.
The practical test is not the logo on the terminal. Count the separate company names across your Clover paperwork: the software agreement, the lease, the merchant application, the debits on your bank statement. If the answer is more than two, you are buying through a channel, and channels are priced. Establishing which entity holds which piece is the first thing we do on a Clover audit, and it is usually the first time anyone has laid it out for the merchant.
They will drop the software fee. That is not the same as fixing the rate.
Push back on your Clover fees and something usually gives. It is very often the visible thing: the monthly software plan, a device fee, a waived statement charge. These are small, they are easy to concede, and conceding them ends the conversation.
The money is not there. On any account of size the markup on processing dwarfs the monthly lines, and it is the one component that never appears as a number you can point at. A concession on a $59.95 software plan against an account paying tens of basis points more than it should is not a win, it is a closing technique, and the merchant who accepts it typically does not reopen the file for another two years.
Before you accept anything. Get the offer as an effective rate on your real volume, not as a list of waived fees. If the person offering cannot or will not express it that way, that is itself the answer.
The same caution applies to switching. Merchants who move processors to solve a pricing problem frequently arrive at the same problem, because the agreement that mispriced them once was negotiated the same way the second one will be. We found the identical pattern on Worldpay fees. Fix the pricing before you move the hardware, not after.
Common questions
Does Clover charge a monthly fee?
Yes, on most plans. Clover publishes software plans from $0 a month on its entry Payments plan to about $89.95 for full table-service restaurant software, plus $14.95 for each additional device at the same location. If your statement shows a materially larger monthly figure, the excess is almost certainly a reseller markup on top of the published Clover fees, an equipment lease, or merchant-account charges.
How much does Clover charge per transaction?
Clover’s published rates are 2.6 percent plus 10 cents for card-present transactions on its entry plans, 2.3 percent plus 10 cents on higher plans, and 3.5 percent plus 10 cents for keyed or card-not-present transactions on all plans. Those are Clover’s direct rates. An account sold through a reseller can be priced on an entirely different structure, including tiered pricing, and is not bound by those figures.
Why is my Clover rate higher than the rate on Clover’s website?
Because the website price is Clover’s price for a direct account and you very likely do not hold one. Clover is distributed through a large independent sales channel whose partners set their own pricing, and Fiserv publishes no ceiling on what they may charge, no fee-disclosure requirement for them, and no stated audit rights over their pricing.
Does Clover have a cancellation fee?
Clover’s own software terms are comparatively short: a one-year term with a 30-day exit. The expensive exits are elsewhere. An equipment lease held by a separate finance company is often pre-printed as non-cancelable over 36 to 48 months and payable in full, and the merchant processing agreement carries its own early termination or liquidated damages clause. Read all three before assuming you are free to leave.
Can I use my Clover device with a different processor?
Sometimes, and the public claims on this conflict. Clover hardware is generally tied to the merchant account it was provisioned against, and whether a given device can be re-provisioned depends on where it was bought, how it was financed and which partner holds the account. Get the answer in writing from whoever sold you the device before planning a switch around it, and settle any lease separately.
Are Clover fees negotiable?
Some are and some are not. Clover’s published plan prices are what they are. The markup, the rate structure, the monthly minimum, the statement fee and the PCI programme fee sit with your reseller or acquirer, and that is where negotiation actually moves money. Bring an effective-rate calculation and a competing structure, not a request for a discount.
Did Clover really remove some of its fees?
Yes. After merchant attrition and a sharp share-price fall in late 2025, Fiserv reversed a set of pricing changes it had made to Clover accounts. Management said the removed fees “don’t feel appropriate” and quantified the reversal as roughly a six-point growth headwind to the following quarter. Whether a specific fee left your account is a question for your own statements: put a 2024 statement beside a current one.
Is Clover cheaper than Square or Toast?
On published pricing the three are broadly comparable for a small card-present business. In practice Clover has a far wider spread, because Square and Toast sell direct at one published price while Clover is largely sold through resellers who set their own. Clover fees can land well below or well above a Square equivalent, and the deciding factor is usually who sold the account rather than the platform itself.
Who do I call about a Clover charge I do not recognise?
Start with the descriptor on the bank debit rather than with Clover. The charge may originate with the reseller, the acquiring bank or a leasing company, and Clover support cannot alter a fee it does not set. If the descriptor does not resolve to a company you can identify, that is worth treating as a finding in itself.
Send us the statement. We will tell you what is in it.
weAudit reads merchant statements for a living. We do not sell processing, we take no compensation, referral fee or residual from Clover, Fiserv or any processor, gateway or reseller named on this page, and we are not going to tell you to switch. We will tell you what you are paying, what it should be, and which of the three companies on your paperwork can actually change it.
Get My Free Audit See How the Audit Works 800-672-1292More on Clover: the full Clover entry on the Processor Scoreboard covers the conduct record, the contract terms and the device-portability question. Related reading: Fiserv Fees, Worldpay Fees, Elavon Service Fee, Your ISO Has No Record, and The Processor Scoreboard.
Sources and corrections. Clover plan prices, processing rates and hardware prices are the company’s published figures as reported in late 2025. Reseller pricing is drawn from published third-party pricing guides rather than agreements we have reviewed. Statements attributed to Fiserv executives are drawn from published earnings-call coverage and news reporting. Fiserv, Clover and any reseller referenced here are invited to respond, and documented corrections will be published alongside the original text.
How these figures were produced. Published prices were taken from Clover’s own pricing pages as reported in late 2025 and compared against reseller package pricing published by third-party pricing guides. No Clover merchant statement is reproduced on this page. Where a figure comes from reporting rather than from a document we hold, the page says so.
© 2009-2026 weAudit.com. All rights reserved. Clover, Fiserv, First Data and Payeezy are trademarks of Fiserv, Inc. or its subsidiaries. Square, Toast and Truist are trademarks of their respective owners. weAudit.com is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Fiserv, Inc. or Clover Network, LLC.
This page is provided for general educational purposes and is not financial, legal, or accounting advice.
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