There's a lot of confusion about American Express merchant services. We regularly field questions about discount rates, pricing models, and settlement. In this article, we'll explain everything you need to know about accepting American Express at a business. Just looking to see costs to take Amex cards? For the most up-to-date pricing, use our f...

If you use Intuit for your merchant services, you may find your monthly statements confusing. This tutorial will show you to read an Intuit merchant statement, and it will highlight the aspects of Intuit's credit card processing services that make it expensive and opaque when compared to more competitive options that we will cover. The methodolo...

A more cost-effective, transparent alternative to tiered merchant account pricing is available to businesses that know enough to request it. What is Tiered Pricing? Tiered pricing is a merchant account rate structure that credit card processors use to assess charges. It is also referred to as bundled pricing because it allows processors to grou...

This article will provide the general steps and knowledge necessary to decipher your small business credit card processing statement, and will link to detailed examples of actual statement analyses that will allow you to follow along as we dissect various merchant account statements. Existing Clients: If you used CardFellow to find your current ...

This decision overturns a 1992 ruling in Quill Corp. v. North Dakota in which the Supreme Court ruled that a business must have a physical presence in a state for that state to require it to collect sales taxes. That means that any online business did not have to pay sales tax in states where it did not have nexus. However, the topic of online s...

A contract is a good thing because it provides protections for businesses and processors by clearly outlining the responsibilities of each party under a merchant processing agreement. A contract term is also a good thing. Without a term, a processor would not be obligated to provide processing services for any length of time. Most businesses wou...

Interchange plus rates vary widely from one processor to the next. How competitive rates are will depend on your business's processing profile and how you are gathering quotes. It's also important to understand that interchange plus is a form of pricing; it's not a single rate. The percentage portion of the processing markup (the "rate") may not...

Not too long ago, CardFellow posted an evaluation of Costco merchant accounts that found Costco's service to be very disappointing. Undeterred, I decided to take a look at the merchant services offered by Sam's Club to see if Costco's big-box competitor fares any better. As it turns out, Sam's Club Merchant Services uses the same bait-and-switch ta...