Credit card fees are a fact of business life, but trying to figure out what you are actually paying can feel like trying to understand ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.
There are generally two methods processors use to price their services:
- Tiered pricing
- Tiered merchant accounts work on a tiered system of rates that can be much higher than expected and impossible to accurately anticipate.
- Interchange plus
- Processors take the interchange rate (the rate that Visa, Mastercard or Discover charges them) and add a fixed markup for every transaction.
Do you know which you are paying? You can save thousands of dollars by understanding what system your processor is using.
One of our Wintix customers just wrote to us about how hard it was to get straight answers to his questions from his processor (he was being charge tiered pricing) and after much difficulty, switched companies to receive much more advantageous interchange plus rates.
Read the fine print about account fees, as well. They can add up to a lot of money.
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