Millions of Businesses Qualify for Refunds

 

Many North American Businesses Can Benefit

To provide relief from excessive card processing fees, recent U.S. legislation has capped some card processing fees at just 0.05% and 5 cents. However, the law did not require third-party merchant account companies known as “Processors” or “Independent Sales Organizations (ISOs)” to pass the savings onto their business customers. ISOs and Processors are the companies that service your merchant account. In other words, they collect fees, issue your processing statements, and provide customer support. In many cases, if your bank supplies your merchant account then it is also likely your Processor. Whether it be a processor, bank, or independent sales organization, in this article, we will be using the term “ISO” to collectively refer to all the companies that manage the card processing services for businesses.

Most U.S. businesses obtain merchant accounts through ISOs, so the savings with the current rate cuts are not getting passed to millions of businesses. Instead, many ISOs are engaging in fee-arbitrage between banks and businesses and raking in millions that were intended to provide relief for business owners.

How to Know if You are Getting the Savings

First, you will want to gather a recent merchant account statement that represents a typical month of card processing before the COVID-19 crisis. Next, download the Visa Interchange Fee Schedule and Mastercard Interchange Fee Schedule which detail the wholesale rates for each business type and card type. Please note that your ISO will be adding its own margin on top of these rates.

Compare your statement transaction line items to the Interchange fee schedules by using the tables provided in the fee schedules. This last step may prove to be difficult due to the lack of standardization among ISOs on how fees must be presented on statements. To complicate things even further, there are a variety of pricing schemes that obfuscate or hide Interchange rates altogether making it impossible to understand how fees are being calculated. If you can’t find matching line items in the Interchange pricing schedules, you are likely under a murky and expensive pricing scheme.

How to Get Reimbursed

If you have found matching line items in your statement that are being imposed at a higher fee than the Interchange fee schedules, you will need to pull all statements for 2020 to calculate the total amount that you have been overcharged. You will also want to make a list of all other additional fees found in the statements and determine any margins that are being added on top of the Interchange fees. Armed with this information, call your ISO to present your case and demand a refund. Be sure to also obtain a new agreement for reduced fees in your future processing.

Need Help?

If you are finding the above steps to be complicated and confusing, you are not alone. It seems that the card processing industry has intentionally made its pricing so complex that only industry insiders can decipher it. That’s where we come in. My name is Phillip Parker and I used to be one of those industry insiders. I left to help businesses of all sizes recover excessive costs related to their payment acceptance services because I was appalled by the price gouging that I was seeing on a daily basis.

We Make it Easy

My team and I have the knowledge, experience, data, and skill to obtain large refunds of excessive card processing fees. We specialize in uncovering opportunities for refunds of previous fees as well as reductions in future processing costs without disrupting current payment vendor relationships with your ISO or your own internal operations. This means no new merchant accounts, no new hardware costs, no new software integrations, and no retraining of staff. Simply put, our clients obtain the lowest processing costs possible without switching anything. We simply trim the fat with your current merchant services providers.

With 12 years in operation, we have gained knowledge of how each provider hides fees, makes “mistakes” with rates, and pads hidden margins. We take this experience and use a three-step process to obtain substantial savings for our clients:

1. We identify junk fees and excessive margins over the wholesale Interchange rates.
2. Analyze each transaction line item to identify incorrect Interchange rates and transaction fees.
3. Compare your rates against our other clients in similar verticals to leverage and engage the merchant account provider in a professional renegotiation of your fees to the lowest they can possibly be.

Defend Against Hidden Fee Hikes

Merchant account providers are notorious for sneaking new fees into processing costs and slowly raising margins in the hopes that it will go unnoticed. We ensure your rates and fees never rise by providing statement monitoring. If they try to sneak in a new fee or raise your rates, we call to obtain a refund and to remove it from future processing costs. Our clients focus on running their businesses while we monitor and police payment processing costs in the background.

No Upfront Costs

Our analysis is free and if we identify opportunities for refunds or future savings for your business, then we can be hired on a contingency basis wherein we only get paid if we deliver quantifiable refunds and savings to you based upon your actual processing costs. We only get paid when we save you money.

For more information, call (512) 201-4077 and we will be happy to answer any questions.

To Get a Free Interchange Analysis

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