Hoping to open after Jan 1 and having been with Dominos my whole life am clueless about cc processing fees.
Last store I had, the fees ran around 6000/month but that is related to sales.
Guy I spoke to yesterday offered me…
.05/swipe. 35 basis pts and “cost plus” pricing.
No freaking idea what any of that means other than the swipe fee.
Any help appreciated.
Hello,
Here is some information which hopefully will help all of you
I used to work with few processing companies and from what I can tell, Heartland is one of the best options if not the best one. (No, I never worked for Heartland). From what I have seen Heartland has the most transparent pricing and low rates.
[][IC Plus or Pass-thru or Cost+] All refer to Interchange Plus Pricing. What does that mean?
It means that all rates as they have been set by Visa, MC, Discover & Amex are being passed to you directly without any changes. You are being charged the rates for every card you process as they are posted online at every major card issuer website. You can look it up. That is the “Interchange” part of the term.
Then it comes the “Plus” part where the processing company makes their money. Whatever you’re being charged for the “Plus” part, you can negotiate in order to get better rates. The “Interchange” part of the fees is NON-NEGOTIABLE.
In other words, when they offer you a 0.35% or 35 basis points and a $0.05 that translates to:
0.35% per $ processed + 5 cents per transaction, on top of what the interchange fees are.
Then you have to take into consideration the PCI Compliance fee, the monthly penalty fee for not being PCI compliant, the AVS Fee (Zip Code Entry), the monthly account fee (if any), the support fee (if any), the statement fee, the batch closure fee, the batch settlement fee, the any unidentified fee, and any other fee you can imagine!
With interchange plus, when your Keyed volume is over 30%, ONLY the “Interchange” rates change and not the “plus”. If the “Plus” fees change, you can always request a rate review to bring them back to what it was.
As sweet as it sounds to you when they tell you’ll get 1.69% + $x.xx per transaction for qualified transactions, you don’t get the whole story that it will be another 1+% + $x.xx per transaction for mid-qualified and an extra 1-2% + $x.xx per transaction for non-qualified transactions, totaling a 3.5% to 4+% and have you wondering what did you signed up for.
Plus, here the whole rate changes if you go over 30% of your transactions being keyed-in.
Of course, besides the tiered pricing all other fees mentioned above (PCI, AVS, etc.) are all extra charges.
- [Debit vs Credit Cards] Should you accept debit cards using a pin-pad?
Debit cards have lower rates as they don’t include any risks since the money is already available in the card holder’s account. That said, debit is not for everyone! Especially in a fast paced environment like pizza shops & deli shops where customers line up. Every second counts there and you don’t want to have to wait for your customers to figure out how to use your pin-pad. This changes if you have a convenience store or any other non food related store.
As for the rates, while they might be cheaper when using debit & pin-pad, the agent who works for or with the processing company might charge you up to 25 cents per pin entry! So that defeats the whole purpose.
Regardless of which processing company you’re using or going to use, keep the above information in mind and pay attention to the contracts.
AND IN NO CASE, NEVER LEASE EQUIPMENT! YOU CANNOT GET OUT OF A LEASE AGREEMENT!
I apologize for my very long post, and I really hope It will be useful to many of you
Good luck to all!
