Does Degiro charge per order or per transaction?
An order is not a transaction.  It is a request to make a transaction.  If the transaction never occurs (e.g. because you cancel the order), then no fees should be charged. will I get the stamp duty back (the 0.5% tax I paid on the shares purchase) when I sell the shares? I'm not a UK tax expert, but accorging to this page is seems like you only pay stamp tax when you buy shares, and don't get it back when you sell (but may be responsible for capital gains taxes).  That makes sense, because there's always a buyer and a seller, so if you got the tax back when you sold, the tax would effectively be transferred from the buyer to the seller, and the government would never collect anything.
As the college education is very costly, I want to send USD 25,000 to him as a gift. What is the procedure and what Indian and American tax laws are involved ? This transaction will be treated as gift. As per Indian law you can transfer unlimited amount to your close relative [son-in-law/grandchildren/daughter/etc]. In US the gift tax is on donor, as you are no US citizen you are not bound by this. As your son-in-law/grandchildren are US citizens, there is no tax to them. Your son-in-law may still need to declare this in Form 3250 or such relevant returns. Under the Liberalized remittance scheme [Refer Q3], you can transfer upto USD 250,000 per year. There maybe some forms that you need to fill. Ask your Bank. If the amount is more than USD 25,000 a CA certificate along with 15CA, 15CB need to be filled. Essentially the CA certifies that taxes on the funds being transferred have already been paid to Govt of India. Can I send money to him directly or to his father who is submitting tax returns in USA? This does not make any difference in India. Someone else may answer this question if it makes a difference in US. "PayPal offers a service called ""PayPal Business Payments"". Instead of charging a percentage, they charge a flat fee. For US-to-US payments, the fee is fifty cents per transaction. For Canada-to-Canada payments, the fee is five dollars per transaction. You need to use a third-party invoicing service and choose the ""PayPal Business Payments"" option. FreshBooks or Zoho Invoice might work." I am using my debit card regularly: in ATM's with a pin, in stores with my signature, and online. But later you say  But from what I recall from starting my own business (a LONG time ago), for debit cards there's only a per-transaction fee of like $0.25, not a percentage cut. Only pin transactions have just a per-transaction fee paid by you to the merchant (and you are reimbursed by Schwab).  If you use your card with just a signature or online without a pin, then it is a credit transaction from the merchant's perspective.  The merchant pays a fee and Schwab gets its cut of that.  So for two of the transaction types that you describe, the merchant pays Schwab (indirectly) out of your payment.  Only when you enter your pin does it process as a debit transaction where Schwab pays the merchant.   Because check cards withdraw the money from your account immediately, you don't even get the twenty to fifty day grace period.  So those merchant fees are pure profit for Schwab, offsetting the loss from the ATM fees.   You claim $4-5k in fees at $.25 each.  That's sixteen to twenty thousand transactions.  Assuming that several is four to five years, that's more than ten transactions a day.  That seems like a lot.  I can see three for meals, one for miscellaneous, and maybe some shopping.  But if I go shopping one day, I don't normally go again for a while.  I have trouble seeing a consistent average of five or more transactions a day.   Even if we use just the higher ATM fees (e.g. $2), that's still more than a transaction a day.  That's an extreme level of usage, particularly for someone who also makes frequent purchases via card.   I haven't done any other business with them. I find this confusing.  How does money get into your account?  At some point, you must have deposited money into the account.  You can't debit from an account without a positive balance.  So you must have done or be doing some kind of business with them.  If nothing else, they can invest the balance that you deposit.  Note that they make a profit off such investments.  They share some of that profit with you in the form of interest, but not that much really.   Of course, Schwab may still be losing money on your transactions.  We can't really tell without more information on how much of each transaction type you do and how much of a balance you maintain.  Perhaps they are hoping that you will do other, more profitable, activities in the future.   I doubt there are that many Schwab customers like you describe yourself.  As best I've been able to see, they advertise their banking services just to investment customers.  So it's unlikely that many customers who don't use their investment services use their banking services just for ATM reimbursements. "The service processors are providing is absorbing the risk.  The flow goes, roughly (and I say roughly because it's a complicated process):  1. You swipe/insert your card at Bob's House of Eatery and get charged $10 for a bucket of ramen or something. 2. The device you swipe your card in, (""a terminal"") encodes the card number, amount, and some other transaction details and contacts a ""Payment Gateway"".   3. The gateway decodes the blob of data, and is responsible for determining the issuing financial institution (""Chase"", ""US Bank"", etc.). 4. The gateway contacts the above and asks, ""Can card # 555.. charge $10?"" 5. The gateway also sends this answer to the processor.   5. The processor _immediately_ proxies that yes/no back to the merchant's terminal. 6. The processor, having a transaction ID, and a yes/no, sends the response to the merchant's systems so your receipt can be printed or order processed, and so on.   7. Meanwhile, the processor has a transaction ID and is busy figuring out things like interchange fees.  The amount depends on a whole host of things, and almost everyone involved in the process wants their cut -- the bank, the gateway, the processor, and it all depends on the type of card, customer, rewards, and so on.   8. At the end of the day, week, whatever, the processor collects money from the issuing financial institution and is responsible for giving the right amount -- less fees -- to the merchant.    The processor here also absorbs the risk and costs for things like chargebacks, as almost everyone in that chain (gateway, issuing bank) want their pound of flesh for a chargeback, and often the processor doesn't pass that full cost on to the merchant and instead does some risk analysis to determine if they think this merchant is going to be okay to do business with.    That's what you're paying for." I don't know of any and it is unlikely that you will be able to find one.  Most credit card processors charge a flat fee plus percentage.  The flat fee is typically in the 35 cent range making the cost of doing business, in the manner you are suggesting, astronomical.   Also what you are suggesting is contrary to best practices as hosting services, and many other industries, offer deep discounts when making a single payment for an extended period of time. This is not very helpful, but I think it is unrealistic to find what you are suggesting. "My suggestion would be""inclusive/ including 2% service charge"" or ""2% deductible towards service charge would apply""" "You need to negotiate with your broker to allow you to do more exotic order types.  One in particular I recommend is a ""hidden"" aka iceberg order.  You enter two numbers.  The first is the number of shares for your entire order, the second is the amount that will be displayed in the book (this is the tip of the iceberg, the remaining shares are hidden below the surface). The maker/taker rule applies as follows: The amount displayed will receive the rebate for providing liquidity.  The amount hidden will be charged the fee for taking liquidity. Example: You want to sell 10,000 shares total.  You enter a hidden order for 10,000 shares with 1,000 displayed.  On the level 2 screen traders will see 1,000 shares, and those shares will stay displayed there until the entire order is filled.  You receive a rebate for 1,000 shares, you pay the brokerage fee for 9,000 shares. Also, like one of the previous posters mentioned, only trade high liquidity stocks.  Large market cap companies with high volume.  This is why day traders love Tesla, Amazon, Netflix, etc. Large market cap, high volume, and high volatility.  Easy to catch $10+ moves in price. Hope this helps Happy trading" "There's a significant difference between ""discount"" and ""surcharge"". For starters - legal difference. If you have a list price of $X - that's the price you're committed to sell regardless of the payment method. So it doesn't matter if I pay with cash or credit - I'll pay $X. However, it costs you more when I pay with credit - so you want to pass that cost on me. You charge me surcharge - an addition to the price. In some States in the US and in some other countries - that is against the law. You cannot add on top of the listed price any amount regardless of the payment method. However, you can say that the list price is $X, which includes the assumed credit card surcharge of $Y. And then you give discount of $Y to anyone not paying with credit card. The list price is still $X, regardless of the payment method. You don't have to give the discount, the discount is your cost of doing business. But that would be legal in some places (not all!) that forbid credit card surcharge. So the main difference from legal perspective is that you're not allowed to add to the list price, but you're allowed to discount from it. Regarding taxes - exemption/deduction is not a penalty for negative. Exemption/deduction is an implementation of a social policy. For example, it is for the public benefit for everyone to own a house. So the Congress comes up with a deduction of mortgage interest. However, you're not penalized if you don't own a house by paying higher taxes. Your tax rate doesn't change. You just don't get to deduct something that you might be able to deduct had you owned a house with a mortgage. This is, again - a discount of a list price, not a surcharge. You're not penalized if you don't have a house or don't have a mortgage, but if you do - you get a break. The author you're quoting claims that bottom line would be the same as if you considered the absence of a deduction as a penalty. But that's not true, because even if you do have a mortgage you may not be able to deduct it because your income is too high, the mortgage is for too much, or your mortgage is not on the primary residence. So mere existence of the mortgage doesn't directly correlate to the existence of the deduction. Similarly with credit card surcharges - you may get a cash discount, but you may get the similar amount of money back even if you use a credit card. Not as a cash discount but rather as rewards, cash-backs or points. However, if there's no cash discount, you won't be getting these if you're paying cash. So again - you're not penalized for having a credit card by not getting a discount, because you may still get it in a different way - and if you don't, you still may end up not getting it. So the quote is a rather simplistic and negative view and more of an opinion than stating a fact."