"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. At a realistic 30% adoption the benefit is €75,419 a year.

Full episode for the transaction-level breakdown, the decision framework, and where cards still genuinely win.

Full source material and the complete comparison: https://go.payware.eu/p-a2a-vs-cards-b

Produced by payware - the transaction resolution network for instant A2A payments.

AI-generated from payware's published research and documentation.