This is so true, Im still totally happy with Vantiv (Worldpay) even with these latest rounds of issues they add to my plate.
Ive always hovered around 3% but with worldpay its 2.4%
Ive been promised so much savings from different CC processers only to swith and get hit with annual fees or whatever new fee they decide, Worldpay has kept me closest to their word.
I wish we (merchants) could band together and make it so the customer paid the processing fee, its a convience for them-not for me. I haVe to supply the paper, the network and the hardware to process the payment and then I get charged on top of it.
I’m at 2.7… did 36.6k in CC sales in Nov (not sure if that matters)… I see 168.11 in ‘other’ fees. I see the Integrity Fee’s add up, I have one for 28.8 and one for 8.7. The two that make me really wonder are the ‘Visa FANF OTHER’ fee of 17.00 and the ‘OMNISHIELDASSURE’ fee of 14.95 which google tells me is Vantiv’s ’ “4-point protection.” The 4 “points” are EMV acceptance, encryption, PCI compliance, and breach assistance.’ which means this is their security suite and I can probably get rid of it because I don’t think Im that high of a risk. Obviously there are a host of other fees that just look made up but these were the big ones I found.
This is my new location that opened in July so I might not have been with them long enough for them to start cranking things up on me. My other store uses a different merchant although I need to switch both to Vantiv here soon. I think my Vantiv store gets a better deal.
IF you cancel the OMNISHIELDASSURE that has PCI Compliance, Vantiv/Worldpay will charge a non compliance fee. You could eliminate the suite and just get the PCI compliance for 9.95 per month.
I officially cancelled last month once my PoS company had our new online-ordering integration with Heartland up and running.
I have a direct line to a rep at Heartland. Their rates were much lower, Vantiv offered to match them if we signed a 5-year pay-us-no-matter-what contract. No contract with Heartland. Only one regulatory fee with Heartland, $33 single fee vs. almost $200 over a dozen things with Vantiv.
Only service-related thing I don’t like about Heartland so far is that their reps won’t run a credit and I have to manually type them into the pin pad on site. Mercury was okay to work with before they got gobbled up by Vantiv before they got gobbled up by Worldpay. I’m not trying to sell Heartland to anyone, they all remind me of this scene from Bonfire of the Vanities…
I just noticed something very shady on my statements which helped me figure out where the extra charges are coming from…on each statement for over a year in the surcharge section on the left side it has listed the rates for each card type with the description. Starting with my September statement, which is when my rates jumped about 0.8%, it no longer lists the rates. A rep reached out to me the other day but I missed their call. Hopefully I will get them on the phone today.
Just an update…still haven’t got the rep on the phone but after exchanging emails she informed me of a message I apparently missed that read : “Beginning in September 2018, a processor surcharge fee of up to 1.85% will be applied to non-qualified transactions, which is in addition to your existing non-qualified rate. This fee will be included in the surcharge section of your statement, and is calculated by multiplying the processor surcharge fee by the applicable transaction volume.” I asked what that extra charge is for exactly and why they decided to suddenly not list the rates when they added the extra charge. Still waiting to hear back.
She also offered to take my interchange rate from 0.10% to 0.05% and said that should save me around $300 per month which is about what that extra surcharge was costing me. We will see if that holds true next statement, but if it does I’m happy. Don’t really care what what they want to call the charges as long as my effective rate is where it should be we are good. Just annoying I have to take time to deal with this.
To help you understand, there are few different options on how your processing charges will be priced by the company you sign up with. The 2 most common are Interchange Plus and Tiered Pricing.
If you’re on interchange, then you’re not on tiered. That simple. If you don’t know about Interchange+, there are few posts in the forum that outline specifics about it.
If you are on tiered however, then you have to deal with “Qualified, Mid-Qualified & Non Qualified” transactions. This is the trickiest way possible as they usually promise rates as low as 1.69% plus few cents per transaction for all qualified transactions, but the “forget” to tell you that mid & non qualified transactions add about 1.5% - 2.5% plus few extra cents, ON TOP OF THE QUALIFIED RATE!
You will never be able to figure out which is which between qualified, mid & non qualified transactions as it is not listed anywhere but only on your statement and honestly, good luck deciphering a tiered pricing statement!
Here is an example of how tiered pricing works:
[LIST]
[]Let’s say that the interchange rate for a Visa debit (set by Visa), is 1.19% plus 5 cents.
[]This would be considered a qualified transaction for your processing company if you accept the debit card in store using a pin pad. Since they are already charging you 1.69% plus whatever cents above cost (let’s use 8 cents as an example), then this transaction has no risk since it is a debit and the processing cost is covered allowing room for some profit.
[]However: If you accept the debit card over the phone due to delivery, or if you accept it in store but process it as credit, then it drops to the mid-qualified category.
[]By dropping category, you just got charged the 1.69% plus the 8 cents for the qualified part but now the transaction is mid-qualified, so you have an additional charge of 1.5% plus 5 cents, which brings the total charge to 3.19% plus 13 cents.
[]Now, if you processed that card yesterday, but you haven’t batched out / settled your transactions before midnight, then it will drop one more time and go to non-qualified which will also add extra charges just like the mid-qualified did! Rates will vary.
[]If the card was a credit rewards card, you could be going straight to non-qualified category because the rates are to high for your processing company.
[/LIST]
There is a lot more involved which would take forever to explain, and even I, don’t know everything in that.
But that’s an just an example so you can get an idea of how confusing and expensive the tiered pricing can be.
Hello Steve. I have interchange plus and they sent me the notice about the extra charge being added to non-qualified transactions. I know you have a lot of experience with processing. Have you heard of that being done before or is this maybe a new trend?
As far as I know, if you’re on interchange plus then you shouldn’t have to deal with non-qualified transactions since they are not a part of the interchange plus pricing schedule.
If I were you,I would have called my rep and ask them what the non-qualified transactions have to do with me since I’m on interchange plus schedule and expect an explanation that I would make sense.
This makes no sense to me…
But again, if you’re happy with your monthly fees as is, then I wouldn’t change anything until it needs to be changed.
Got our statements. They never opted us out of Bizshield, nor did they credit is for auto enrolling us without out consent. Also, still charged us an annual fee for one account after we agreed to have it taken off of one account completely. No response out of the guy I dealt with on the negotiating a month ago. No one can do their f*cking job any more
I have not contacted them yet. But I stopped keying in the cvv code 2 or 3 months ago just to save time. During that time my rates have went from 3% to 5%. I am just wandering if the 2 are related.
Also one guy had 6 separate credit card purchases, that his mom reported as fraud. I just went to him and got cash. I wonder if that had something to do with my rates going up
