Statements are designed to be unreadable.
A typical merchant statement lists dozens of line items, interchange categories, assessments, tiers, "non-qualified" surcharges, with abbreviations that mean nothing to the person paying them. Formats differ between processors and change without notice.
The effect is that most business owners know what they paid in total and almost nothing about why. That opacity is what makes everything else possible.
The seller of the service also grades its own fees.
Processors set the criteria for downgrades, add "compliance" and "regulatory" fees that no regulator required, and raise rates mid-contract with notice buried in the statement itself. Sales reps are paid on margin.
None of that is illegal. All of it depends on the customer not looking closely, and the statement is built so they won't.
No one is required to tell you what a fair rate is.
Interchange is published by the networks. Everything above it is private: there is no rate card, no benchmark, no obligation to disclose markup. Two identical businesses can pay rates a full percentage point apart and neither would know.
Without a benchmark, negotiation is guesswork. With one, it isn't, which is the whole point of what we do.
Anatomy of a bill
Two of these slices are set by the card networks and published. The other two are set by your processor and aren't. Proportions below are illustrative.
What we're doing about it
We can't regulate the industry. We can make every statement readable, every rate comparable, and every fee accountable, one business at a time.
Tell us about your volume and we'll estimate what you could save. Free, with no obligation. If you save nothing, we charge nothing.
