CDG Commerce Review 2026: Pricing, Fees & Features

Pros and cons

Pros

• The interchange plus markup is published, so you can audit every statement against a number you saw before you signed.
• The gateway is included on Interchange Plus with no per-transaction gateway fee, which removes a line item many processors bill separately.
• Three plans keyed to monthly volume, so the pricing pages tell you which plan you should be quoted before you talk to anyone.
• Month-to-month terms with no early termination fee, according to Merchant Maverick.
• Support is in-house, U.S.-based, and available around the clock, by CDG's own description.
• In business since 1998, with an A+ rating and accreditation from the Better Business Bureau.

Cons

• You cannot accept pricing online. Every account starts with a quote request and ends in a phone call.
• Flat Rate is the most expensive plan per dollar, and CDG's own pages disagree about whether it carries a monthly fee.
• Wholesale Membership fees are billed annually, not monthly.
• U.S. businesses only. CDG does not underwrite merchants outside the country.
• Chargeback, retrieval, batch, and ACH fees are not on CDG's site. The figures in this review come from Merchant Maverick.

Who it is for

CDG fits you if:

• You are a U.S. business taking cards online, in person, or both.
• You do $10K a month or more and want a published, auditable markup.
• You want a gateway included instead of paying Authorize.Net separately.
• You want to talk to a person when something breaks.
• You bill on a schedule or by invoice and want that from the same account.

CDG is not for you if:

• You are outside the U.S. CDG does not underwrite non-U.S. merchants.
• You do under $1K a month and want a free, instant, self-serve account.
• Your category is one CDG excludes, such as adult or gambling. Confirm with CDG before you apply.
• You need pricing you can accept online without a phone call.

The second list matters as much as the first. If you are an early-stage online business doing a few hundred dollars a month, a flat-rate aggregator with instant signup will serve you better until your volume justifies a merchant account. If you run a SaaS product with seat-based proration and entitlement logic, CDG can process the cards, but the billing engine has to come from somewhere else.

Pricing

CDG publishes three plans and assigns each one a monthly card volume band. The bands are CDG's, not ours. Treat them as the plan you should expect to be quoted, not a guarantee of the rate you will be offered. Card mix, risk, and channel change effective cost, and a quote from CDG will reflect those.

Plan	Monthly volume	Rate	Monthly fee
Flat Rate	$1,000 to $10,000	2.90% + $0.30 swiped and mobile; 3.50% + $0.30 online	$9.95
Interchange Plus	$10,000 to $200,000	Interchange + 0.35% + $0.15 online; + 0.30% + $0.10 retail; + 0.25% + $0.10 nonprofit	None published
Wholesale Membership	$200,000 and up	Interchange + $0.15, $0.12, $0.09, or $0.06 per transaction by tier	$49, $79, $99, or $199, billed annually

Flat Rate, $1K to $10K a month

One rate per channel, a small monthly fee, and no interchange to read. Swiped and mobile transactions are 2.90% + $0.30. Online transactions are 3.50% + $0.30. Keyed transactions carry a 0.60% surcharge. The monthly fee is $9.95, and a mobile card reader costs $99.

One conflict to know about: CDG's quote page says flat rate has no fixed monthly fee, while the flat-rate pricing page lists $9.95. We cite the flat-rate page because it is the more specific of the two. Ask which applies when you get your quote.

Flat rate is simple, and usually the most expensive per dollar once volume grows. At $10K a month in online sales across 200 transactions, 3.50% + $0.30 comes to about $410 in processing before the monthly fee. Whether interchange plus beats that depends on your card mix, but for most merchants near the top of the band it does, which is why CDG moves you to the next plan at $10K.

Interchange Plus, $10K to $200K a month

This is the plan most readers of this site land on, and it is the reason CDG scores well on pricing. You pay the card networks' interchange at cost, plus CDG's fixed markup:

• Online: 0.35% + $0.15 above interchange
• Retail: 0.30% + $0.10 above interchange
• Nonprofit: 0.25% + $0.10 above interchange

The Quantum or Authorize.Net gateway is included, with no per-transaction gateway fee. That matters more than it looks. Many processors bill the gateway as a separate monthly fee plus a few cents per transaction, and those cents add up on a high-count, low-ticket business. Countertop terminal placement is $79 a year with no purchase required. CDG does not publish a monthly account fee for this plan, so ask for it on the quote.

Interchange and card-network assessments are separate and set by the networks, not by CDG. A statement that only quotes markup understates your all-in rate. What the markup does tell you is CDG's share of each sale. On a $100 online transaction, CDG's share is $0.50. On a $100 retail swipe it is $0.40. On a $100 nonprofit donation it is $0.35. Interchange and assessments are added on top at whatever the card's network charges, and they would be the same at any interchange plus processor.

That is the case for interchange plus over flat rate at this volume: the processor's margin is visible, fixed, and small. When your card mix shifts toward debit, you keep the savings instead of the processor.

Wholesale Membership, $200K and up a month

Interchange at cost plus a flat per-transaction fee, with a membership fee billed annually. The percentage markup goes away entirely. There are four tiers, each with a monthly volume cap:

• Basic: cost + $0.15 per transaction, $49 a month, up to $25K a month
• Standard: cost + $0.12 per transaction, $79 a month, up to $75K a month
• Plus: cost + $0.09 per transaction, $99 a month, up to $200K a month
• Premium: cost + $0.06 per transaction, $199 a month

Membership fees are paid annually, not monthly, so budget the full year up front. Countertop terminal placement is $79 a year on this plan too.

Note that the caps on the first three tiers sit below the $200K band CDG assigns the plan. The tiers are published, so ask CDG which one applies to your volume rather than assuming the band. The arithmetic favors wholesale when your average ticket is large: on a $100 ticket, the Interchange Plus online markup is $0.50 and the Plus tier is $0.09, a $0.41 difference on every sale. Across 1,000 transactions a month that is $410 saved against a $99 membership fee. On a $10 ticket the difference shrinks to $0.095 a sale, and the membership fee eats most of it.

Features

CDG's feature list is a merchant account list, not a billing suite. What is included:

• Merchant accounts for online, retail, and mobile acceptance
• Quantum, CDG's own gateway, or Authorize.Net, with no per-transaction gateway fee on Interchange Plus
• Recurring billing for scheduled charges
• Invoicing
• Virtual terminal for keyed and phone orders
• POS and mobile or wireless options, with a $99 mobile reader on Flat Rate and $79-a-year countertop terminal placement on the other two plans
• 350+ integrations, by CDG's count

CDG's quote form asks for one of six business types: Retail / Service, Restaurant, E-Commerce, B2B / Industrial, Non-Profit, or Specialty / Other. If you do not fit one of those cleanly, pick the closest and explain on the call.

What is not here: usage metering, proration, entitlements, tax calculation, or a customer portal for plan changes. If your business needs those, CDG is the acquiring layer and something like a dedicated billing platform sits on top. Our guide to choosing billing software for B2B SaaS covers that layer.

Confirm current capabilities during underwriting. Feature pages change, and the gateway you get may depend on the integration you need.

Contract and fees

CDG does not publish its contract terms or its incidental fees on its own site. The figures below are Merchant Maverick's, from its CDG Commerce review. Confirm each one on the agreement you are offered.

• Contract: month to month, no early termination fee
• Chargeback: $25
• Retrieval: $15
• Batch: $0.10
• Amex surcharge: 0.25%
• ACH: 0.75% + $0.15

Those are ordinary numbers for a merchant account. A $25 chargeback fee is at the low end of what the industry charges, and a month-to-month term with no termination fee is the arrangement you want. The reason the contract score is 4.0 and not higher is that CDG leaves these terms to third parties to report. A processor that is confident in its terms should print them.

What CDG does publish about the commercial relationship: approval in about 1 to 3 business days (CDG's estimate), a $9.95 monthly fee on Flat Rate, annual billing on Wholesale Membership, and $79 a year for terminal placement. There is no published monthly fee on Interchange Plus, which is either a good sign or a gap in the pricing page. Ask.

Underwriting is real. CDG is a registered ISO/MSP of Synovus Bank and Citizens Bank N.A., which means a bank is standing behind the account and will review your business before approving it. That is the trade for a dedicated merchant account: a few days and a conversation, in exchange for an account that is yours rather than a sub-account of an aggregator.

Support

CDG describes its support as 24/7/365, U.S.-based, and in-house. That is the description on its site, and it is the main reason a merchant chooses a company like this over a self-serve platform. When a batch fails to settle on a Saturday night, you want a phone number that a person answers.

We have not load-tested the support line, and we do not repeat other sites' support ratings as our own. What we can say is that the sales motion is human from the first step. A quote request is answered with a rate sheet and a phone call, and the two questions CDG asks are your business type and your monthly volume. Have both ready.

If you prefer a support model that is documentation-first with a ticket queue behind it, that is a fair preference, and it points you toward a developer platform rather than a merchant account provider.

Reputation and complaints

CDG Commerce was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Port Orange, Florida. Its Better Business Bureau profile shows an A+ rating and accreditation since 2020. It operates as a registered ISO/MSP of Synovus Bank and Citizens Bank N.A.

CDG serves U.S. businesses only. If you are incorporated elsewhere, or you sell primarily to customers outside the U.S. from a non-U.S. entity, this account is not available to you, and no amount of volume changes that.

For complaints, read the BBB profile directly rather than a summary of it. We do not aggregate other sites' ratings into our score; our score is ours, and the method is on the methodology page. Two things we would flag ourselves: the disagreement between CDG's quote page and its flat-rate page over the $9.95 monthly fee, and the absence of published fee and contract terms. Neither is a red flag on its own. Both are reasons to read the agreement you are offered line by line.

Before you request a quote

Write down three numbers: your monthly card volume, your average ticket, and the share of your sales that happen in person. Those decide which plan applies and whether the wholesale tiers are worth a look. Then read the plan page for the band you land in, so you can check the quote against the published markup when it arrives.

A quote request ends in a phone call. If that is fine with you, and you are a U.S. business doing $10K a month or more, CDG is worth the call. If it is not, the CDG Commerce guide walks through the same numbers at a slower pace.