Just did some testing on my own to confirm.
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Buyers will now pay a variable service fee. According to Mercari this is based on a number of (seemingly ambiguous) criteria such as category and brand of the product.
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Upon checkout when I select the ? next to service fee, it tells me this, which makes me think they’re not actually going to publish any hard numbers for this service fee.
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Based off of screenshots, I’ve seen the service fee be as high as 10% of the subtotal.
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The buyer also has to pay a (completely separate) payment processing fee of 2.9% + $.50.
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I tested by attempting to buy a copy of Super Mario Sunshine. The fees are not made obvious on the item’s listing page, it just shows the price of the item and shipping.
- When you go to your cart after adding the item, there is still no mention of any additional cost beyond the list price of the item and shipping.
- The next screen is the final checkout screen where you put your payment information in. Finally on this page you see a breakdown of the costs and the real total. However, it’s at the bottom of the page, after you already fill in all of your info, right above the submit button. I can’t help but feel this was intentional. I think a lot of buyers will fill in all of their info, scroll down to the bottom, and hit the checkout button without even realizing the fees are there.
Just want to add that since my Mercari account is new, there’s a $5 credit there that normally wouldn’t be. Essentially this item listed at $40 would cost you $50.77, and it seems to only have a 5% fee which seems low compared to other items I’ve seen.
Edit: adding what @bbobrob said below, which is that the payment processing fee is waved if you use your Mercari balance to pay. Presumably that’s because there is no payment processing fee paid by Mercari at that point.
To add to this, sellers are now charged $2 whenever they want to withdraw their money from Mercari to their bank. They really want you to spend the money on their platform it seems.