Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their very own.
Key Takeaways
U.S. retailers paid a report $198.25 billion in card processing charges in 2025, up 219% since 2009.
The cardboard networks’ high interchange charges have barely moved in that point. A lot of what retailers overpay is processor markup and add-on charges, and people could be negotiated.
5 questions, answered in writing, can expose the markup earlier than you signal and shield you after.
In 2009, U.S. retailers paid $62.1 billion to just accept credit score and debit playing cards. In 2025, they paid $198.25 billion, in line with Nilson Report figures printed by the Retailers Funds Coalition. For many companies, card acceptance is now the most important working price after labor.
You’ll suppose the charges themselves should have exploded. They haven’t. When the Authorities Accountability Workplace studied interchange in 2009, Mastercard’s highest interchange fee was 3.25%. Immediately it’s 3.30%, 5 foundation factors in 17 years. Visa’s high fee was 2.95%. It’s now 3.15%, however that improve is current, and most Visa transactions nonetheless clear at 2.95% or much less. Extra folks paying by card explains a lot of the expansion in that $198 billion complete. It doesn’t clarify why so many retailers watch their very own efficient fee creep up yr after yr whereas the networks’ printed charges barely transfer.
That hole is the processor’s markup and the charges stacked on high of it. I do know, as a result of I helped accumulate them. I spent greater than a decade within the bank card processing division of a business financial institution, as an govt at Fifth Third Processing Options, later Vantiv and Worldpay, now a part of International Funds. Through the Nice Recession, retailers processed much less, so our income fell.
As an alternative of using it out, the reply was new charges. The day we introduced one other one, a month-to-month cost of about $8.95 per service provider ID, the temper was celebration, not remorse. I might not do it. I blurted out in a boardroom assembly I obtained into banking to make my mom proud, and I’m leaving as a result of I might not inform my mom what I did for a dwelling. That was January 2009.
Later that yr, three different former executives and I based a bank card processing auditing agency to guard retailers from unethical billing practices. Our audits reveal overbilling in about 99% of the statements we evaluate, and greater than 90% of the accounts we audit aren’t arrange correctly from the beginning.
Right here’s the essential math: Interchange, the wholesale price each processor pays, accounts for 80% to 90% of what a service provider ought to sometimes pay. A aggressive markup over interchange could be as little as 0.02% to 0.05%. Nonetheless, generally reported markups vary from 0.15% to 0.90%. For instance, on $2 million in annual card gross sales, the distinction between a 0.50% markup and a 0.05% markup is $9,000 a yr, not even accounting for added junk charges.
Earlier than you signal, ask these 5 questions. Get each reply in writing, signed by an officer of the corporate, on paper. Not an e-mail, not a cellphone name. You need one thing that can maintain up in court docket.
Query 1: “Is my fee mounted, or are you able to increase it with out my signature?”
Practically each service provider settlement lets the processor change its charges, and even its phrases, at any time with nothing greater than discover. That discover often arrives as a line of advantageous print within the message field in your month-to-month assertion, which nearly no person reads. Visa and Mastercard launch fee modifications twice a yr, in April and October, with greater than 200 guidelines and charges altering directly. A processor improve that lands in the identical cycle disappears into that noise. A signed fee is a beginning place, not a assure.
Query 2: “Will you present me your markup individually from interchange?”
That is the one most revealing query on the listing. Interchange-plus pricing reveals interchange on one line and the processor’s markup on one other. Tiered and flat-rate pricing mix the 2, so you may by no means inform what the processor is maintaining. If a processor received’t unbundle it, it’s hiding the markup. Then ask the follow-up: Is interchange handed by means of at price, or padded?
Query 3: “What occurs if I wish to go away?”
Search for early termination charges, liquidated damages clauses that invoice you for the processor’s projected revenue on the remainder of the time period, and tools leases that survive after the processing contract ends. Then discover the auto-renewal clause. Many require you to cancel inside a slim window years sooner or later, and a few processors have pushed that discover interval out to 90 days earlier than renewal. By the point most retailers look, the window has closed and they’re locked in for one more time period.
Query 4: “Which charges on my assertion do you management?”
The cardboard manufacturers set interchange and community assessments. The processor units a lot of what sits on high, even when it’s named to sound official. “Annual PCI charge,” “regulatory compliance charge” and comparable line objects sound like authorities or card-brand expenses, and are sometimes pure margin. Ask the processor to label each line in your assertion as both a pass-through or its personal. Something it controls, you may negotiate. That $8.95 charge I watched get invented by no means appeared on anybody’s assertion as “additional revenue.”
Query 5: “Will you set each verbal promise in writing?”
The basic pitch is a rep quoting a low efficient fee that disappears after 90 days, or a promise to match any provide that no person can discover a yr later. If the promise isn’t within the contract, it doesn’t exist.
The contract is your solely safety
It doesn’t matter how good your charges are if the contract lets the processor change them each time it desires. Negotiate the contract as arduous because the pricing: strike or cap the termination charges, shorten or take away the auto-renewal and lock the markup in writing.
Then maintain watching. Processors know most retailers don’t know what the codes and acronyms on an announcement imply, and those who do have too many different fires to spend hours every month checking for overbilling. That’s how accounts drift.
Keep in mind, this isn’t like different vendor agreements the place you validate the invoice after which pay it. With service provider processing, you’re giving them unvetted entry to your checking account — which I typically discuss with because the “keys to the dominion.” They take what they need, after which they ship you an announcement that you could’t learn or validate.
Whether or not you’re negotiating a contract or having an legal professional vet it to make sure you aren’t signing a nasty contract that would price you some huge cash, it is best to use a agency that’s an knowledgeable on this house.
Sure, our agency may help with that, however many others can as nicely. Nonetheless, do your homework, too. Make sure that they aren’t a bank card processor pretending to be a bank card processing auditing agency. Try their BBB, their LinkedIn profiles, and many others., and ensure you dont signal something that isn’t month-to-month and has a money-back assure.
Key Takeaways
U.S. retailers paid a report $198.25 billion in card processing charges in 2025, up 219% since 2009.
The cardboard networks’ high interchange charges have barely moved in that point. A lot of what retailers overpay is processor markup and add-on charges, and people could be negotiated.
5 questions, answered in writing, can expose the markup earlier than you signal and shield you after.
In 2009, U.S. retailers paid $62.1 billion to just accept credit score and debit playing cards. In 2025, they paid $198.25 billion, in line with Nilson Report figures printed by the Retailers Funds Coalition. For many companies, card acceptance is now the most important working price after labor.
You’ll suppose the charges themselves should have exploded. They haven’t. When the Authorities Accountability Workplace studied interchange in 2009, Mastercard’s highest interchange fee was 3.25%. Immediately it’s 3.30%, 5 foundation factors in 17 years. Visa’s high fee was 2.95%. It’s now 3.15%, however that improve is current, and most Visa transactions nonetheless clear at 2.95% or much less. Extra folks paying by card explains a lot of the expansion in that $198 billion complete. It doesn’t clarify why so many retailers watch their very own efficient fee creep up yr after yr whereas the networks’ printed charges barely transfer.
That hole is the processor’s markup and the charges stacked on high of it. I do know, as a result of I helped accumulate them. I spent greater than a decade within the bank card processing division of a business financial institution, as an govt at Fifth Third Processing Options, later Vantiv and Worldpay, now a part of International Funds. Through the Nice Recession, retailers processed much less, so our income fell.
