Paybyrd Paybyrd
Honest comparison · 2026

Paybyrd vs Ifthenpay

Ifthenpay headlines the lowest Multibanco rate in Portugal. It doesn't tell you what actually shows up on your invoice.

Savings vs Ifthenpay
€5,700 / yr
at €1M annual volume · blended mix
Cost reduction
35%
lower processing cost
Approval lift
+4–7%
vs benchmark · multi-acquiring
Migration
14 days
typical · parallel-processed
Rates at a glance

The numbers, side by side.

Blended rates against a typical EU merchant card mix (85% EEA consumer, 10% non-EEA, 5% business). Published pricing as of April 2026.

P
Paybyrd
Online cards
1.25% + €0.08
APMs
€0.2
Card-present
0.5%
Chargeback fee
€7.5
Monthly minimum
None
I
Ifthenpay
Online cards
1.65% + €0.2
APMs
0.7% + €0.07
Card-present
0.85%
Chargeback fee
€10
Monthly minimum
None

Rates are blended against a typical EU merchant mix (85% EEA consumer, 10% non-EEA, 5% business). Headline rates in Ifthenpay's own published materials don't include the non-EEA and business-card surcharges that apply to most real merchant volume. These numbers do.

Where Ifthenpay still wins

We won't pretend Ifthenpay is all bad.

Ifthenpay has a real business and serious strengths. Here's the honest list, so you can weigh it against what Paybyrd changes.

✓ Ifthenpay is strong at
  • Cheapest headline Multibanco rate for pure EEA-consumer volume.
  • Strong domestic Portuguese brand, familiar to SMB merchants.
  • Simple flat-fee MB WAY pricing.
→ Where Paybyrd wins
  • Real blended rate is 1.65% + €0.20 on a typical 85/10/5 EU mix once non-EEA +1% and business-card +1% surcharges apply. Paybyrd is 1.25% + €0.08, full stop — no surcharge pyramid.
  • Tourist-heavy merchants (Lisbon centro, Algarve, Porto ribeira) bleed 0.2–0.4% on every non-EEA card. Paybyrd routes international cards through dedicated acquiring at competitive rates — same MB WAY + Multibanco on SIBS, none of the tourist tax.
  • 4–7% approval-rate lift via multi-acquiring routing. Ifthenpay is single-path; if the issuer declines, the sale is gone. Paybyrd retries soft declines across acquirers in under 200ms — on €500K/yr that's ~€20K–€35K of recovered revenue.
  • Paybyrd Antifraud: 47ms p95 decisions, 55+ signals (10 IP + 45 device + transaction-level), −16.8% chargebacks on average. Rules + ML hybrid with every signal explainable. Ifthenpay has no comparable fraud product.
  • Card-present payments from 0.50% with Paybyrd terminals (PAX A77 from €199, Sunmi T3 Pro Max from €599). Rent from €12/mo or buy outright. OTA updates, white-label boot logo + receipts, offline store-and-forward buffering 500+ transactions. 24h swap guarantee in Lisbon / Porto.
  • InstaTax built into every Android terminal: detects eligible tourists via BIN match in under 200ms, offers tax-free refund on-screen, pays you a revenue share daily. +50% merchant revenue vs other tax-refund platforms. Activation in 24h, zero staff training.
  • 192+ currencies, 40+ countries, 20+ EU-native methods — native iDEAL, Bancontact, Klarna, Floa, Revolut Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay for merchants with any cross-border or EU-wide exposure.
  • 99.999% uptime SLA with contractual credits + engineer-led support (no ticket queues). Named TAM + Slack SRE channel for Custom plans. Ifthenpay publishes no SLA.
  • Per-outlet / per-channel / per-SKU reconciliation in the dashboard. Finance closes the books in hours, not Mondays. Ifthenpay's dashboard shows a daily total and little else.
  • Up to 80% DCC revenue share on international-card volume, paid out daily. Material for tourist-heavy merchants — this alone often offsets the entire card-acceptance cost.
How the switch works

14 days from contract to live traffic.

We don't ask you to flip a switch. Parallel-processing means you compare diff reports against your incumbent before committing. Rollback is always one config flag away.

  1. Phase 1 · Week 1–2
    Sandbox + integrations

    Your integrations team pairs with ours. Paybyrd sandbox certified. Existing card tokens, recurring IDs, and APM references mapped 1:1 on our side so no customer re-auth is needed.

  2. Phase 2 · Week 3–3
    Parallel processing

    Paybyrd handles 5–20% of live traffic while Ifthenpay processes the rest. You compare approval rates, cost per transaction, and reconciliation against your incumbent in real time.

  3. Phase 3 · Week 3+
    Graduated cutover

    You hold the rollback switch. Scale Paybyrd traffic at whatever pace you're comfortable with — 50%, 80%, 100%. Most merchants finish cutover within 14 business days of contract sign.

Common questions

About switching from Ifthenpay.

We mostly accept Multibanco and MB WAY. Is Paybyrd competitive vs Ifthenpay?
Yes. Paybyrd's Multibanco rate is from €0.20 fixed, MB WAY from 0.70%. The difference vs Ifthenpay at small volume is nominal; the savings compound on card-present and international-card volume, where Ifthenpay surcharges heavily and we don't.
What if we have tourist-heavy volume (Lisbon, Algarve, Porto)?
This is where the Ifthenpay blended rate blows out. Non-EEA cards surcharge +1%, business cards +1% — on a 15% tourist/business mix that's an extra 0.15% across ALL your volume. Paybyrd routes non-EEA cards through dedicated international acquiring at competitive rates, typically saving 0.2-0.4% on tourist-heavy merchants.
Does Paybyrd work with SIBS / Unicre for acquiring?
Yes — Paybyrd orchestrates across SIBS, Unicre, and our own acquiring relationships. You keep your existing Portuguese acquirer contract if you have one; we add multi-acquiring routing on top so transactions declined by one route automatically retry on another.
How fast is the switch?
14 business days is typical for an Ifthenpay → Paybyrd migration. Your MB WAY and Multibanco references keep working — we map them 1:1 on our side. Card tokens import cleanly. Most PT merchants are live in under 3 weeks with zero customer-facing disruption.
Can I keep my existing acquirer contracts?
Yes. Paybyrd is acquirer-agnostic — keep your negotiated rates and in-flight volume commitments. We orchestrate on top. If you later choose to consolidate, we can act as your acquirer across 90+ markets, but it's a separate decision on a separate contract.

30 minutes with a payment engineer,
your numbers, no slides.

Bring your most recent Ifthenpay statement. We'll benchmark your actual approval rate against Paybyrd's multi-acquiring routing (typical lift: 4–7% on EU card volume), and map the migration path.