Note: These fees were more common early after the EMV liability shift took place in 2015, but they can still apply for businesses that haven't upgraded to chip-capable equipment. As time goes on, we anticipate these fees to be eliminated (or change into something else) as machines that can't accept chip cards are phased out and no longer supported....

OptBlue provides potential benefits to businesses in the form of transparency and reduced costs over current American Express's old One Point pricing, but it also opens the door for uninformed businesses to overpay. If you're looking for an American Express merchant account, here's what you'll need to look for - and what to avoid. What is...

Once you start shopping rates, you begin playing a shell game that is fixed in the processor's favor. You can't win, and you will end up paying hefty processing costs even if you choose the processor that offers the "lowest rate." As I'll explain in this article, it's not a processor's rates that are most important. It's the pricing model and ma...

The key to lowering your business's credit card processing expense is not avoiding non-qualified fees. The key is completely eliminating a processor's qualification altogether. Who Determines Rate Qualification Qualified, mid-qualified and non-qualified rates are set and manipulated by credit card processors through something called tiered pric...

Keep in mind that Visa and Mastercard don't impose fees on businesses that are PCI non-compliant - that decision comes from your processor, so it's purely a for-profit charge for them. Processors are not required to charge you a non-compliance fee. Let's take a closer look at PCI non-compliance fees and how you can avoid them. What is PCI? PCI...

Some credit card processors charge a PCI fee and provide no compliance support, others charge a fee for providing compliance scanning and assistance, and some don't charge a fee at all. So how do you know if you're being charged fairly? Let's take a look. What is PCI? PCI DSS stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, and it's essen...

Unnecessarily high debit card transaction fees are an easily correctable source of significant losses for many businesses. Understanding debit card transaction fees and the difference between signature debit and pin debit transactions will save your business thousands in processing fees. Feel free to jump down to the Signature Debit Vs Pin Debit...

Credit card processing statements are full of confusing acronyms and opaque fees. We can help you figure out what they are and how to lower your costs if your fees are adding up to an expensive processing solution. What is a POS WATS Fee? As mentioned above, the pos wats fee is a fee you'll see each time the credit card equipment dials the processo...

A common and costly mistake when shopping for credit card processing services is to focus on a processor's rate while paying little attention to transaction fees. The financial impact of this mistake is especially damaging for businesses with a low average sale amount. What's the difference between a transaction fee and a processing rate? Each ti...

This article explains what a basis point is, how to calculate fees using basis points, and finally the role basis points play in credit card processing — specifically having to do with a processor's markup. What is a basis point? A basis point is a unit of measurement that is equal to 1/100 of one percent, or 0.01%. A basis point expressed numer...