How To Save Money On Credit Card Processing - Credit card tips

Have your monthly “junk” fees reduced or waived
Merchant service providers get much of their revenue on fees in addition to transaction processing charges. Junk fees usually go by many names like a customer service fee or statement fee. Ask your merchant service provider to run through your latest statement. If they ever mention fees, ask what they are for. If it is a junk fee – you should insist that it be reduced or lowered from your account entirely.

How To Save Money On Credit Card Processing - Credit card tips

Have your annual fees waived
In general, annual fees are comparable to the junk fees explained above, but they may be even more expensive. There is absolutely no reason for your merchant service provider to charge you a merchant account annual fee. Uninformed merchants may be paying expensive annual fees for their merchant accounts without even realizing it as the fees may not appear on their statements.

When you open your merchant account, examine the schedule of fees and scour it carefully for any annual fees. If you don’t receive the schedule of fees, contact the merchant service provider and ask whether they charge annual fees. If you are being charged annual fees – insist that it be lowered or better, waived.

Have your monthly minimums waived

Especially if you deal with a business in seasonal swings, you may have significant expense to your monthly minimums. The monthly minimums are the amount a merchant service provider charges regardless of your current processing volume.

For instance, if a merchant account has a $15 monthly minimum and the processing charge for a given month is only $10 – you would incur an extra $5 charge just to bring the total monthly charge up to the $15 minimum amount. Contacting your provider and asking the fee removed entirely from the merchant account can save you a lot of money after a year without minimum fees.

Clean magnetic strip reader on your credit card machine

Take a few minutes to clean the credit card machine reader as it can save you significantly on monthly processing charges. The credit card magnetic strip holds vital information about a cardholder that your credit card machine scans when the credit card is swiped through the reader.

If you want to get the lowest possible credit card processing rate, your machine must read all of the information from the magnetic strip. Dirty strip reader may prevent accurate data reading and cause corrupted results in some or all entries. The transaction can still be approved; however it will incur a higher interchange rate. Periodically cleaning magnetic card reader may help to prevent overpaying the processing fee.

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