For years, third-party marketplaces and delivery platforms have justified their high 15% to 30% merchant commission rates by claiming they are required to cover operational expenses — from credit card processing fees to logistics support and engineering overhead.
But the financial reports show a very different reality.
In our latest editorial infographic, we examine the annual net profits of three major platforms in the delivery and gig economy space: Uber, DoorDash, and Instacart.
When platforms like Uber generate over $10.1 billion in net profit, DoorDash registers nearly $935 million in net profit, and Instacart claims $457 million in net profit, it becomes impossible to argue that these commissions are simply covering operational costs. As the infographic highlights: the fee isn’t covering their costs. It's building their wealth.
Draining Wealth from Local Communities
Every time a sit-down restaurant or neighborhood grocer accepts a delivery order through a first-generation gig aggregator, they lose a massive portion of their top-line revenue to platform fees. Because independent food service and retail businesses already operate on razor-thin single-digit net margins, a 30% platform commission essentially transfers all potential profit away from the merchant and routes it out of Canada entirely.
Decommissioned Commerce: The Future
At Aisle FLO, we designed our suite (FaveCart, GetFLO, Shopper Service, RADL, Fred the Dog, GoCart) around a simple, disruptive premise: ordering technology should be treated as a standard business utility, not an extraction engine.
By replacing transaction-based commissions with flat-rate subscriptions (like GetFLO’s transparent flat monthly subscriptions and FaveCart’s 0% commission model), Canadian merchants can easily run highly profitable digital delivery and pickup channels, retaining 100% of their customer relationships, data, and margins.
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