What Are The Many Credit Card Processings Fees Associated With Setting Up A Merchant Account?

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These are some of the fees that a merchant will pay when they process credit cards through a typical merchant accunt?

Address Verification Fee

The fee charged to the merchant to perform address verification. This usually happens when a merchant has to key in a transaction if the mag stripe does not work.

Chargeback Fee

This is the fee charged by a bank when a chargeback is issued to a merchant. This varies from $15.00 ? 30.00 per transaction. (Plus the actual amount of the chargeback sale)

Check Guarantee Fees

Check Guarantee fees are basically structured similar to credit card processing fees. There is usually a percentage rate, transaction fee, statement fee, monthly minimum, and application fee.

Check Verification Fees

Check verification does not guarantee checks. Check verification checks whether the check writer has a history of writing bad checks. There is usually not a percentage fee associated with check verification

Debit Fees

Debit fees vary based on the debit network that issues the debit card. Debit fees are comprised of network fees and transaction fees.

Discount Rate (Per Transaction)

The discount rate is the fee charged by the acquirer to the merchant to process each transaction. This rate is dependent upon several factors, but usually the rate is either a retail (card present) merchant or a MOTO/Internet (card not present) merchant. (If the business owner is set up on a three tier system) Retail Rates are lower because they present less risk than card not present transactions. Card not present rates are higher due to the increased risk exposure to the bank.

Internet Payment Gateway Fees

A monthly fee associated with maintaining a merchant?s secure payment gateway. Usually there is a setup fee, a monthly gateway fee, and/or a transaction fee. The monthly gateway is usually between $10.00-$25.00, and the transaction fee ranges from .05 - .15 per sale.

Investigation Fee

This fee is charged by some banks to investigate or research merchant transactions.

Monthly Fee

This is the monthly fee charged to the merchant in order to produce a monthly statement of transactions and will cover customer service. This statement will usually breakdown their total sales by day, average ticket amount and total charges.

Monthly Minimum Fee

This is a set minimum the bank charges each account. Monthly minimum fees range from $10.00 - $25.00. That means if the merchant doesn?t process any transactions, the bank will still receive the monthly minimum fee income in order to service the account. Let?s look at a merchant with a monthly minimum of $25.00. If they processed $1,000.00 in charges and the discount rate is 1.65%, the monthly discount fees will be $16.50, they did not reach the $25.00 minimum, so they will be charged the difference of $8.50. If they ran $10,000 in sales at a 1.65% discount rate, the monthly discount fee would be $165.00, so they would not be charged the $25.00 monthly minimum fee.

The monthly minimum only comes into play for low sales volume merchants.

Retrieval Fee

Fee charged to process a retrieval request.

Transaction Fee

This is a fee charged to the merchant to authorize a transaction.

Voice Authorization Fee

This is the fee charged if the merchant calls to Visa/MasterCard for a manual voice authorization.

Wireless Fees

Wireless terminals require a wireless network to process transactions. The monthly wireless access fees range from $15.00 ? $30.00 and additional per transaction fees can range from .05-.35 per transaction depending on the carrier.

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