GMV (gross merchandise value)
The total value of sales before fees, refunds and chargebacks. Useful for sizing a business; misleading as a measure of what actually reached the bank account.
Why it matters to a merchant
A useful headline and a poor basis for a payments decision, because it says nothing about the shape underneath it. The same GMV made of a few large sales and of many small ones produces very different processing costs — which is why basket size, not turnover, is usually the number to bring to a pricing conversation. It is also the number most likely to be quoted at a provider by a merchant who has been told their volume gives them leverage. Sometimes it does. But a provider pricing a business reads the shape underneath — average sale, card mix, present versus not present, how much of it is foreign-issued — because that is what determines what the business actually costs to serve. A merchant who arrives with those four numbers is having a different and much shorter conversation than one who arrives with a turnover figure, and it is usually a better-priced one.
Where this comes up
Pages on this site that deal with this in context:
Related terms
In this section: What it costs, and what gets measured