Credit Card Processing Company Recommendation

AggieMike88 said:
I got my merchant account statement from Chase Paymenttech this afternoon by email. With this thread in mind, I took a look at the amount I was charged by Chase and divided by the net volume processed.

Result was 1.991% on my calculator.
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Sounds ok to me. Looks like your clientele doesn't use many special promotion type cards.
How is your processor when it comes to disputes ? I doubt you'll do much better on the rate, if you are happy with their service, I wouldn't change.
 
I'm okay with the service, but more from not having a big need to poke the bear. I will mention that we experienced the death of the terminal at the first of the month due to a bad power bump (yes, it was on a surge protector, but I guess enough voltage came from somewhere). They provided a replacement unit to me in 2days for just $50 and no charge for shipping.

Chargebacks are rare. And I think that comes from both us willing to work with the customer (provided they themselves give us a chance to do right, and 99.8% do), and the fact most understand and accept the risk that they are buying a recycled product.

I'm going to monitor this ratio for a month or two to see if we hold to 1.99% or not.

Thanks for the feedback.
 
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AggieMike88 said:
Reviving this discussion for a moment....

I got my merchant account statement from Chase Paymenttech this afternoon by email. With this thread in mind, I took a look at the amount I was charged by Chase and divided by the net volume processed.

Result was 1.991% on my calculator.

Am I reviewing this correctly?

Yeah, I'm getting messed over with some fees I don't really like (such as $0.15 per transaction to deposit the money into my account), but I'm not sure at this low of an "overall rate" if it's worth the hassle of switching to someone else.

Anyhow, statement posted if folks want to be nosy and or review and kibitz.
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So, you're billing scheme is called "at costs with downgrade". Essentially, they're saying that you pay 1.91% for a "standard" visa charge. They pay 1.51%. So they're making a .40% markup (40 basis points). That's actually not totally over the top for your volume. The "non-qualified" charges are all 40 basis points above cost as well.

Where you're taking a bit of a hit is on the debit charges. They're probably averaging a 70-80 basis point markup on a lot of those. That and the $.15 "deposit fee" are where they're making most of their money on you. They're probably making somewhere around $150/month give or take on your account. I could likely save you a little bit...but I'd have to actually run the numbers.

Are you leasing that terminal from them? Is that what the $50 charge is for?
 
Terminal is owned outright. Already learned that lesson a few processors ago.

The $50 was what they asked for for the refub'd unit to replaced the one that died.
 
jason said:
. I could likely save you a little bit...but I'd have to actually run the numbers.
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How many old statements you want to run the numbers? and what email to send to?
 
check cardfellow.com .
They rate different processors with reviews.
We switched from SCam's running 4 to 5% to GDpay around 1.5-2%
 
n1959 said:
check cardfellow.com .
They rate different processors with reviews.
We switched from SCam's running 4 to 5% to GDpay around 1.5-2%
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I'd be interested to see your statement. It's not really possible to get 1.5-2% rates across the board unless you do 100% (or mostly) debit transactions.

Everybody has to pay the piper to Visa and Mastercard. And everybody pays the same rates to them. It's called "interchange" and you can download the rates directly off of their websites. It's all dependent on what card is used. Rewards and business cards are charged a higher interchange rate because somebody has to pay for the rewards. For *most* companies that advertise 1.5% rates there is a huge disclaimer at the bottom of the page that says something along the lines of that rate being good on "qualified charges" which roughly translates to "non-rewards cards". Depending on your business you may not have a lot of rewards/business traffic...so you may come out fine.

Generally, the best arrangement is to get yourself with somebody that is giving you "interchange plus" pricing. That essentially means that they're passing along the interchange costs that they're paying to the processor and then adding in their markup. So you know exactly what everybody is getting for every transaction. This really pays off if you have a lot of debit card traffic...which is very inexpensive to process. I even like to go so far as to say "here's what I'll be making on this account".

To me, there is definitely a price factor here, but there is also a trust factor. I'd always like to be somebody that my clients can trust to educate them on how the system works.
 
jason said:
I'd be interested to see your statement. It's not really possible to get 1.5-2% rates across the board unless you do 100% (or mostly) debit transactions.

Everybody has to pay the piper to Visa and Mastercard. And everybody pays the same rates to them. It's called "interchange" and you can download the rates directly off of their websites. It's all dependent on what card is used. Rewards and business cards are charged a higher interchange rate because somebody has to pay for the rewards. For *most* companies that advertise 1.5% rates there is a huge disclaimer at the bottom of the page that says something along the lines of that rate being good on "qualified charges" which roughly translates to "non-rewards cards". Depending on your business you may not have a lot of rewards/business traffic...so you may come out fine.

Generally, the best arrangement is to get yourself with somebody that is giving you "interchange plus" pricing. That essentially means that they're passing along the interchange costs that they're paying to the processor and then adding in their markup. So you know exactly what everybody is getting for every transaction. This really pays off if you have a lot of debit card traffic...which is very inexpensive to process. I even like to go so far as to say "here's what I'll be making on this account".

To me, there is definitely a price factor here, but there is also a trust factor. I'd always like to be somebody that my clients can trust to educate them on how the system works.
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That's the overall cost for the month........not the rate.And that is interchange plus pricing..:)
 
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