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Why the cart shows a fee before the customer has chosen

The cart page does not know how the customer will pay. WooCommerce picks a method anyway: the one chosen last this session, or the store’s default gateway, or the first enabled one. So the cart shows a fee that changes once the customer actually picks a method at checkout.

The charge is always right. The number on the cart is the guess, and it is what customers write to you about.

Hide on the cart

Do not show the fee on the cart page — store-wide, under General settings. The cart never lists a payment fee, chosen method or not; the fee appears at checkout, where the method is chosen. The amount charged never changes.

Show beside each method

Show the fee beside this payment method’s name at checkout — per method, under Display. The fee amount rides beside the method’s own label, in brackets, for every method that has one: Cash on delivery ($3.25), Bank transfer (-$2.20). The customer compares all of them before picking one, instead of discovering the charge after.

A zero fee shows nothing. A conditional fee shows the amount the rules would charge on this cart, so the hint and the eventual charge agree.

The two go together: hide the preview on the cart, where it is a guess, and show the real figures at checkout, where they are not.

On the order-pay page

The same hint appears on the pay-for-order page when off-checkout fees are on, and there the order total follows the selected method too, so the amount on the Pay button is the amount charged.

Without Pro

Two free ways to soften the cart problem: order your payment methods in WooCommerce so a fee-free one comes first (that is the one the cart previews), and give the fee a title that says what it is for, so a shopper who sees it understands it. Neither removes the preview.