What you actually pay, and how to check it

How a card price is built

• Interchange, set by the card networks

  Set by Visa and Mastercard, collected by the issuing bank, and passed straight through. Every provider pays exactly the same for it, so no proposal can discount it.

• Network assessments

  The networks' own charge on your volume, funding the network rather than the issuer. Pass-through in the same sense: no processor sets them.

• Processor markup, the only negotiable part

  Usually a percentage plus a per-transaction amount, added on top of the two pass-through pieces. The one component the company you sign with actually prices.

• The charges that sit outside the rate

  Monthly account, PCI, batch, minimum and equipment lines are the provider's to set as well, and none of them fall when sales do. A markup quoted alone is one line of the bill.

The pricing models, and what each one shows you

• Interchange-plus

  Interchange and assessments at cost, markup printed as its own line. A line can be checked against a schedule the networks publish, which no other model allows.

• Flat-rate packages

  One percentage and one per-transaction amount for every card. Predictable, and indifferent to card mix, so the cheap transactions carry the expensive ones.

• Tiered or bundled pricing

  Transactions are sorted into qualified, mid-qualified and non-qualified buckets the networks do not publish. The quoted rate is the qualified one; what you pay depends on how much volume downgrades.

• Custom and enterprise pricing

  Volume-tiered economics for multi-location operators, platforms and high-throughput merchants. Still worth reducing to an effective rate before accepting it.

Interchange-plus example

See how network interchange and processor markup combine on common card-present and e-commerce scenarios.

Work out your effective rate before you compare anything

The lines on a statement that are not the rate

• Monthly account or statement fee

  A flat charge for holding the account, billed whether or not you processed anything.

• PCI programme fee, and PCI non-compliance fee

  The programme fee funds compliance validation. A non-compliance fee usually means a lapsed annual self-assessment questionnaire rather than a security problem, and completing the questionnaire and recording it against your account is what ends the charge — paying the fee satisfies nothing.

• Monthly minimum

  The shortfall billed when your processing fees do not reach a floor. Paying it every month means the agreement was written for a larger business.

• Batch or settlement fee

  Charged per closed batch rather than per sale, so it follows how often you settle, not how much you sell.

• Chargeback and retrieval fees

  Per case, and separate from the disputed amount. Whether the fee comes back when you win the dispute depends on your agreement.

• Cross-border and currency conversion

  A card issued outside your market carries cross-border interchange, and a sale settled in another currency may carry a conversion charge. Two different lines.

• Terminal, gateway and software lines

  Hardware and software are priced apart from processing. A terminal lease is often a third-party contract, so closing the processing account does not end it.

What legitimately changes your price

• Card mix

  Basic consumer credit sits at the bottom of the interchange schedule, premium and rewards cards above it, commercial and purchasing cards higher again. Which cards arrive is your customers' decision.

• How the transaction was presented

  A card tapped or dipped with the cardholder present is the cheapest presentation. Online, keyed and phone orders cost more, and address verification, the security code and 3-D Secure are conditions on the better rates.

• Average ticket size

  The per-transaction half of a price weighs heavily on small tickets and almost nothing on large ones.

• Monthly volume

  Higher volume qualifies for better markup tiers and spreads the fixed monthly charges across more sales. Both effects run the same way.

• Industry category and risk

  The merchant category assigned at underwriting decides which interchange tables apply, and shapes how a provider prices risk.

Pricing by what you are buying

• Payment processing pricingHow per-transaction pricing is built for card acceptance.
• Interchange-plus pricingInterchange and markup shown separately on every transaction.
• Terminal and hardware pricingCountertop, mobile and smart terminal options and costs.
• POS pricingRestaurant, retail and grocery point of sale.
• Online payment pricingGateway, hosted checkout and payment links.
• Enterprise pricingCustom pricing, onboarding and dedicated support.
• Custom pricingTell us how you get paid and we will price it.
• Fee Check and statement comparisonCompare your current statement against RapidCents pricing.
• Send a statement to salesA person reads the fee lines and replies with the effective rate on your own numbers.

What actually drives your rate in the United States

• Regulated debit is capped, unregulated debit is not

  Under the Federal Reserve's Regulation II, debit interchange from issuers with $10 billion or more in assets is capped, while smaller issuers are exempt and price higher. Two businesses with the same volume can therefore pay materially different debit costs depending on which banks their customers use — something a flat rate averages away.

• You can choose how debit routes

  Regulation II requires at least two unaffiliated networks on every debit card, and the merchant, not the issuer, chooses which one carries the transaction. Least-cost routing is one of the few levers that changes cost without changing anything a customer sees.

• Surcharging is a state-by-state question

  Card network rules cap credit card surcharges and require disclosure at entry and at the point of sale, and several states restrict or prohibit the practice outright. Rules also differ for debit, where surcharging is not permitted. Check your state before switching on a surcharge programme.