Two Businesses Comparison

Why Two Businesses With the Same Sales Can Pay Very Different Processing Fees

It’s a question many business owners ask after comparing notes with peers: “We process about the same amount in sales—so why am I paying more in processing fees?”

The answer is that merchant services pricing isn’t one-size-fits-all. Two businesses with nearly identical sales volume can end up paying very different amounts based on how their payments are set up, how transactions are processed, and what fees are built into their accounts. Here’s why.

1. Pricing Structures Matter More Than You Think

Not all merchant accounts are priced the same way. Some use flat-rate pricing, while others use tiered or interchange-plus models. On the surface, rates can look similar—but the way fees are applied behind the scenes can make a big difference in total cost.

A business with a transparent pricing structure may pay less overall than one with a slightly lower advertised rate that includes hidden or padded fees.

2. How Payments Are Accepted Impacts Cost

The way customers pay matters. Card-present transactions (where a card is tapped, dipped, or swiped) generally cost less than keyed-in or online transactions. If two businesses have the same sales volume but one keys in more transactions, their fees are likely higher.

Security measures like EMV chip and contactless payments can also help reduce costs and risk.

3. Extra Fees Add Up Quickly

Processing fees aren’t just about rates. Monthly charges, statement fees, batch fees, PCI fees, equipment costs, and other line-item charges can quietly increase your total expense.

One business may have fewer add-on fees, while another pays several small charges that add up over time—even if their sales are the same.

4. Business Type & Risk Profile Play a Role

Certain industries are considered higher risk by processors, which can affect pricing. Even within the same industry, differences in transaction size, refund frequency, or chargebacks can influence costs.

Two businesses may look similar on paper, but their processing history can lead to different pricing outcomes.

5. How Often Accounts Are Reviewed (or Not)

Many businesses set up merchant services once and never revisit them. Over time, pricing changes, businesses grow, and better options become available. Without regular reviews, businesses often end up paying more than necessary.

A periodic review can uncover outdated pricing models or fees that no longer make sense.

The Takeaway

• Same sales doesn’t mean same fees. The details behind your merchant account—pricing structure, transaction methods, and added fees—can dramatically impact what you pay each month.
• That’s why a simple review of your current merchant services can be eye-opening.
• Understanding how your account is set up puts you in a better position to control costs, improve transactions, and make sure your payment processing is truly working for your business.

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How to Improve Your Financial Decision Making?

What is Financial Decision-Making?

Financial decision-making encompasses evaluating options, making choices, and taking actions related to financial matters. It involves assessing risks, considering available resources, and aligning decisions with long-term objectives. Effective decision-making is essential for financial success, whether managing personal finances or steering a business toward profitability.

Financial decision-making is a crucial aspect of business management. It involves choosing between available alternatives to achieve financial goals. From budgeting to investment choices, every decision impacts financial stability and growth.

Why is Financial Decision-Making Important?

Financial decision-making plays a pivotal role in achieving financial stability and growth. It allows businesses to:

• Allocate resources efficiently
• Mitigate financial risks
• Maximize ROI
• Adapt to changing economic conditions
• Achieve long-term financial goals

Financial resources may be mismanaged without sound decision-making, leading to financial setbacks and missed growth opportunities.

What Financial Decision-Making Strategies Can You Use?

To make informed financial decisions, businesses use different strategies, including:

• Setting financial goals: Clear and achievable financial goals provide a roadmap for financial decision-making. Defining objectives helps prioritize actions and allocate resources effectively.
• Budgeting and forecasting: Budgeting involves estimating income and expenses over a specific period to ensure that financial resources are allocated wisely. Forecasting helps anticipate future financial trends and plan accordingly, minimizing surprises and facilitating proactive decision-making.
• Risk management: Assessing and managing risks is integral to financial decision-making. By identifying potential risks and implementing mitigation strategies, businesses can safeguard their financial well-being and confidently pursue opportunities.

How to Make Better Financial Decisions?

Making sound financial decisions requires a systematic approach and careful consideration of factors such as:

• Gather information: Before making a decision, gather relevant information from credible sources. Analyze financial data, market trends, and potential risks to make well-informed choices.
• Evaluate options: Consider multiple alternatives and evaluate their potential outcomes. Compare each option's costs, benefits, and risks to identify the most suitable action.
• Consider long-term implications: While short-term gains may seem appealing, consider the long-term consequences of your decisions. Assess how each choice aligns with your overarching financial goals and objectives.

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Tips for Effectively Selecting Your Payment Processor

Selecting the right payment processor for your business is critical – who you choose to partner with as a provider will significantly impact your cash cycle. You’ll want to make sure you’re picking a payment processor that offers everything your business needs, and there are several different elements that you should consider as you search for the most appropriate partner:

Features and abilities. Make sure that your processor can handle many different payment methods, or at least the ones that have historically been used in your payment process. Some of the most common payment methods are credit cards, electronic bank transfers via ACH payment, and wire transfers. Your AR department will easily manage payments if your payment processor can exclusively handle all standard payment methods.

Cost. Fees are everywhere regarding payment processor services, and extra costs are essential for your finance team to consider. Here are the most common payment processor fees to look out for:

• Transaction fees
• Annual start-up fees
• Monthly statement fees
• Chargeback fees
• Minimum monthly fees

When considering which payment processor to work with, it’s essential to look at the entire cost of a processing service. Instead of looking at each fee individually, you’ll need to figure out how much your business would cost to operate with a particular payment processor monthly.

The typical pricing structures of payment processors include interchange-plus, flat-rate, and tiered pricing. Each option has pros and cons, so when comparing services, you’ll have to look at the overall monthly cost to evaluate the best payment processor for your business. Source

Credit Card Processing Redefined: How Modern Businesses Can Turn Transactions into a Competitive Advantage

Credit card processing is often treated as a background utility—something that simply needs to “work.” As long as payments are approved and funds are settled, most businesses assume their setup is sufficient. But in today’s global, digital-first economy, credit card processing is no longer just an operational necessity. It has become a critical lever for revenue growth, customer experience, and risk control.

Behind every successful card transaction lies a complex ecosystem of issuers, networks, acquirers, gateways, fraud engines, and compliance layers. When these components are misaligned or outdated, the impact is rarely immediate. Instead, businesses experience gradual declines in approval rates, higher processing costs, increased false declines, delayed settlements, and lost customer trust. 

What Credit Card Processing Really Involves

At its core, credit card processing enables merchants to accept card payments securely and efficiently. However, the process itself is far from simple. A single transaction involves multiple parties working in real time:

• The customer’s issuing bank verifies funds and risk
• Card networks route the transaction
• Acquiring banks handle authorization and settlement
• Payment gateways transmit transaction data
• Risk and compliance systems assess fraud and regulatory exposure

When any one of these layers underperforms, transactions may still “go through,” but at a hidden cost. Declines increase, cross-border acceptance weakens, and scalability becomes limited. Businesses that rely on rigid or single-channel processing setups often don’t notice these issues until growth stalls or expansion fails.

Common Challenges Businesses Face with Credit Card Processing

Many merchants assume that poor approval rates or rising costs are unavoidable. In reality, these problems are usually symptoms of outdated or inflexible processing infrastructure.

Some of the most common challenges include:

• Inconsistent approval rates across regions: A setup that performs well in one market may fail in another due to local issuing behaviors, regulatory requirements, or network preferences.
• High false declines: Overly aggressive fraud controls often block legitimate customers, leading to lost revenue and poor customer experience.
• Limited acquiring options: Relying on a single acquirer or processor creates bottlenecks and increases exposure to outages, policy changes, or sudden restrictions.
• Slow settlements and cash flow constraints: Delayed payouts can strain operational cash flow, especially for fast-growing or high-volume businesses.
• Compliance complexity: PCI DSS, regional regulations, and card network rules require continuous monitoring and updates—something many merchants struggle to manage internally.

These issues don’t indicate failure, but they do signal that the credit card processing model is no longer aligned with how the business operates today.

Why Modern Credit Card Processing Requires a Smarter Approach

As businesses scale, payment performance becomes less about speed alone and more about consistency, resilience, and visibility. Modern credit card processing demands:

• Multiple acquiring routes for redundancy and optimization
• Intelligent transaction routing based on region, card type, and risk profile
• Balanced fraud controls that protect revenue without harming conversions
• Transparent reporting to identify degradation before it impacts revenue
• Infrastructure designed for growth, not just onboarding

This is where many traditional processors fall short. They were built for static volumes and predictable markets, not for dynamic, global commerce.

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5 Best Practices for Using a Credit Card

A credit card can be a useful tool in building up your credit and often used for accessing many everyday services – from booking vacations to renting a car. Credit cards can also lead to too much debt and cost you more money in the long run, if you don’t use them the right way.

Here are Five Best Practices for using a credit card:

1. Pay your balance to $0 each month, if possible. You can use your credit card every month to successfully build up credit. Carrying a balance month to month means you have to make an interest payment, causing you to pay more than what you originally spent. For this reason, each month, you should calculate how much you’ll be able to pay toward your credit card bill, and only charge that amount to your card. Now, of course there will be times when making the monthly payment in full will be difficult or impossible. If you’re going through a period of unemployment or general financial hardship, you may have to put more on your credit card than you can afford to pay back. 

2. Keep your credit utilization (percentage of outstanding credit balance to your credit limit) below 30%.  Credit utilization is a key component of your credit score. This may take some extra math, but you should keep tabs on your balance each month and strive to keep it below 30% of your credit limit. For example, if you have a $1,000 credit limit, you should try to keep your balance below $300. Using 30% or less of your credit limit is favorable to the credit bureaus. Consider this the sweet spot for maximizing rewards and credit-building while avoiding high utilization.

3. Review your statement each month for accuracy and spending awareness. Always review your monthly credit card statement (or check your balance online) for accuracy and to ensure you’re only paying for charges you made. Don’t hesitate to call your credit card provider to discuss unidentifiable transactions. Fraud continues to be a major problem, and if you don’t check your account or you’re used to having high balances, fraudulent purchases can be missed. Look out for monthly charges and expenses that were forgotten and are no longer needed. Subscriptions to streaming services, gym memberships, magazines, newspapers and websites are all common examples of these expenses.

4. Keep an eye out for promotional periods to capitalize on your rewards. Some credit cards have promotional periods in which you’re offered a 0% interest rate or enhanced rewards incentives during a specific period of time. This often happens when you first get a card but you may receive additional promotional offers in the future, as well. Make sure you’re aware of these promotions, as these are ideal times for including purchases you’d normally make another way. Taking advantage of a promotional period is a strategic way to capitalize on rewards or avoid making interest payments. But you should also be keenly aware of when the promo period ends so that you can have your entire balance paid off at that point. Otherwise, you may be looking at a hefty increase in interest paid over time.

5. Stay up-to-date on your credit score. A credit card can help you build a healthy credit score, so make sure you know where you stand. You can also request your credit report from each of the three credit bureaus annually. A credit card is a beneficial financial tool if used responsibly by incorporating these tips. Source

Credit & Debit Card Processing

Who plays a role in a card transaction?

Obviously, you have the cardholder and the merchant, plus each of their banks, which we will call the “issuing bank” (belonging to the cardholder) and the “merchant bank” (belonging to the merchant). The issuing bank is responsible for authorizing the transaction and for sending funds to the merchant bank if the transaction is approved. The issuing bank will then bill the cardholder monthly for their credit card purchases. Meanwhile, the merchant bank holds the account where funds are deposited following a purchase.

Then, you have the middleman – the payment processor. This can be a separate party or sometimes will be the merchant bank. Regardless, the payment processor ensures the funds are transferred from the issuing bank to the merchant bank. Often, the payment processor will offer the hardware or software used to accept cards, such as tap-to-pay terminals or other card-reading devices.

How does card processing work?

There are two stages to credit and debit card processing – authorization and settlement. If a debit card is used, both authorization and settlement happen in seconds with the money coming out of your checking account. If a credit card is used for payment, the account information is routed from the merchant bank by the payment processor to the issuing bank for approval. The issuing bank will either confirm or deny the transaction and the payment processor will deliver that back to the merchant bank and to the card reader.

Unlike the near instant settlement for a debit card, a credit card settlement can take 1-3 business days. This is the process of actually moving the funds from the issuing bank to the merchant bank. Typically, businesses send batches of transactions to their payment processor at a regularly scheduled time, like the close of a business day. The payment processor and the card networks (Visa, MasterCard, etc.) will work to ensure the funds are deposited into the correct account.

Why is card processing important?

To accept card payments, a merchant will need hardware and software, both of which could be provided by the payment processor. Regardless of whether it’s an entire point-of-sale system or just a simple card reader, these devices collect and send card data to the payment processor. In addition, a software app is often needed for processing. These programs can include features such as inventory management, reporting, analytics and the ability to send customers digital receipts. Card processing also comes at a cost for the merchant, so it is important to find a merchant bank and payment processor that keeps processing fees affordable. Source