Merchant Account Pricing for Online and Retail Accounts

If you run a business, there’s a good chance that you already accept credit cards. If you’re new to starting a business, there are some things you should know about credit card processing that will save you a significant amount of money in the long term.

The first part of pricing that everybody uses to compare one provider against another is the discount rate. Business owners always want to know the discount rate. This is the rate that typically results in the most fees paid by merchants so with good cause is the one that merchants should definitely try to keep low.

Your discount rate is determined by the risk your business may represent to the bank. The more risky your account, the higher the discount rate. The type of cards you process may also influence your discount rate, such as a business credit card vs. a check card, or rewards card for instance.

If you have a lower average ticket item or average transaction, the per transaction fee represents a higher percentage and can even represent a higher percentage of your overall fees than the actual discount rate or percentage. If you have an average ticket item of $10 and a per transaction of $.20, the effective rate on this transaction is 2%. If you add the discount rate of 1.8%, the effective rate on those $10 transactions is 3.8% which is higher than it could be.

If your per transaction fee is closer to $.18 per transaction, your effective rate is reduced by 1.7% which is significant. So, you should know what your average ticket item is going to be or at least a good estimate in order to most effectively determine whether your power of negotiation would best be used to get your discount rate as low as possible or your per transaction fee. Try to get your overall rate or “effective rate” as low as you possibly can.

There is a monthly fee for most merchant accounts. There is a cost associated with providing customer support, physical or even electronic statements, and account maintenance. This is usually a $10 monthly fee that is known as a customer service fee, account maintenance fee or a statement fee.

There is also a monthly minimum that is usually charged on merchant accounts as well. This is a $25 minimum fee based on the discount rate. Any given month, the $25 worth of discount fees is charged. So, if you process $1000 per month at 1.7%, you’ll be assessed $17 worth of discount fees. If your minimum is $25, you’d pay the extra $8 worth of fees to equal the $25.

These fees represent the typical fees charged by merchant providers. There are usually other fees that will show up on your merchant account application, so be sure to ask your merchant account sales representative about any fees that you don’t recognize or know. These fees must be disclosed, even if the sales rep doesn’t tell you about them. When it comes to pricing, trust what’s written on the application because this is what you’ll be agreeing to when it comes to processing.

Be sure to work with a merchant service provider and a sales representative that you can trust. The industry is a lucrative one and attracts both the honest and dishonest sales reps. Having said that, make sure you review the “fine print” and pricing pages for the application before you commit to work with a merchant services provider.