Most business owners file their processing statement without reading it. That is understandable: statements run several pages, use their own vocabulary, and are rarely laid out to make comparison easy. But a few minutes with the right lines can tell you exactly what card acceptance costs you, and whether that cost is fair.

The summary page

The first page usually shows totals for the month: the number of transactions, the dollar volume processed, the amount deposited to your bank and the total fees. Those last two numbers are the most important on the statement.

  • Total volume: the dollar amount of card sales you ran.
  • Total fees: everything the processor charged, whether deducted daily or at month end.
  • Net deposits: what actually reached your bank account.

Card type breakdown

Statements usually break volume down by card brand (Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express) and sometimes by debit versus credit. This matters because interchange, the largest part of your cost, varies by card type. Rewards and business cards cost more to accept than basic debit cards.

Interchange detail

On interchange-plus pricing, you will see a long list of interchange categories with names like "Visa CPS Retail" or "MC Merit III". These are the wholesale rates set by the card networks and paid to the bank that issued the card. They are the same for every processor. If your statement shows them itemized, that is a good sign: it means your processor's markup is separated out where you can see it.

Processor fees

This is the part that varies between providers and the part that is negotiable. Look for:

  • A percentage markup, often labeled as a discount rate or processing fee.
  • A per-transaction fee, a few cents on every sale.
  • Monthly account, statement or gateway fees.
  • PCI compliance or PCI non-compliance fees.
  • Batch fees, charged each time you close out the day.
  • Annual fees, which may appear only once a year.

Red flags worth a second look

  • Tiered pricing with "non-qualified" or "mid-qualified" surcharges that push many transactions into higher tiers.
  • Fees that appeared recently with no notice you remember.
  • A PCI non-compliance fee charged month after month.
  • An effective rate that has crept up over the past year while your mix of sales stayed the same.

Let someone else do the math

If reading a statement line by line is not how you want to spend an afternoon, send it to us. The BrightStar team will break it out, show you the effective rate and every fee, and give you a side-by-side comparison along with the monthly donation your account would generate for a cause you choose. If we cannot beat what you have, we will tell you.

Published · BrightStar Merchant Services