The usual suspects
Canadian merchants should scan every statement for hidden credit card terminal fees before they treat the quoted rate as the whole bill.
- Statement fee: a few dollars a month for a paper or PDF statement.
- PCI compliance fee: charged for the program; a separate non-compliance fee hits if you skip the annual questionnaire.
- Monthly minimum: a fee if your processing volume is low.
- Batch fee: charged each time you settle the day's transactions.
- Tiered "non-qualified" downgrades: mid- and non-qualified buckets that quietly raise your effective rate.
Why tiered pricing is the worst offender
Tiered (or "bundled") pricing sorts transactions into qualified, mid-qualified and non-qualified buckets and charges more for the latter two. Because you can't control which bucket a card lands in, your effective rate creeps up. Interchange-plus pricing removes the guesswork by showing the true network cost plus a fixed markup.
How to make fees disappear
Ask any provider for a complete fee schedule and a sample statement before you sign. Then compare the effective rate, total fees divided by total volume. With Armour Payments, processing starts at $5/month with transparent interchange-plus rates, so there are no mystery line items. Compare on our pricing page.
The statement a cafe owner almost filed away
A single-counter cafe almost archived the monthly PDF because the summary rate looked familiar. Lower on the page were a statement fee, a PCI line, a batch fee for each settle, and a monthly minimum from a slow week. None of those rows were the headline rate the salesperson quoted. The owner added them and divided by card volume. The effective rate was a different number from the proposal. That first statement is the page to read, while you still remember what you were promised. Circle every line that is not interchange or a flat markup. If a label is vague, ask for the fee schedule before the next bill. Start from our pricing, where the account fee is $5 a month on interchange-plus, and set it beside terminal cost.
Line items to circle on the first invoice
On the first statement, mark every line that is not the rate you were quoted. Look for a statement fee, PCI compliance, any non-compliance penalty, a monthly minimum, a batch fee, and a tiered bucket labelled mid-qualified or non-qualified. Write the dollar amount beside each one. Then note whether credit sales were repriced out of the rate on the proposal. A counter lane can look fine at the terminal and still leak margin in those rows. If a line has no definition, email the provider and keep the reply with the PDF. Interchange-plus should show network cost plus a fixed markup. Bring the marked-up statement to a pricing comparison, or contact sales, and ask which of those lines exist on the account you are considering.