These days a lot of small businesses, entrepreneurs, and small charities rush to sign up with Square or Paypal or Stripe or some other service that allows them to accept credit cards with just a simple sign-up and a standard fee for each transaction.
You’re a smart business person. You make decisions every day based on numbers; availability, cost, delivery time, marketability and profit potential.
We talked about interchange fees, and how two statements for the same dollar amount of transactions could result in a different net payout to you.
One of the criticisms of the credit card industry that processors (like us) hear a lot is that the billing methods seem to constantly change.
So your first question naturally is, “How do I get that low rate on my credit card processing?”
Note: the story you are about to read is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. A couple months ago I bumped into an acquaintance from town in the hardware store. I asked him what he was up to and he told me he was setting up a charity in town, a new non-profit organization. The charity…
Before you can even try to understand the fees involved in credit card transactions, you need to at least have a thumbnail idea of who the organizations are and what they do. Here are some very basic descriptions of who is or may be involved in a transaction:
