DO NOT BE FOOLED BY A COMPANY PROMISING YOU 0.50%!!!
Unfortunately, there is another company here in San Diego (whose name is similar to ours) that promises their merchants a flat fee of 0.50% on ALL credit and debit cards! They will look you in the eyes and tell you, "we will only charge you 0.50% on every single credit/debit card you take!!!" That sounds amazing, especially since the average business owner pays about 2.5% in fees. How on Earth is this company able to offer such an amazing deal?!?! The answer is simple; they can't! The truth behind this "amazing" pricing is that the 0.50% is IN ADDITION TO the hard-costs of Visa/Mastercard. The typical hard-costs range (depending on the rewards and other factors associated with each card) between 1.5 - 2.5%. Add the 0.50% to a typical 2.0% hard-cost and voila, you're back at the typical 2.5% that you're probably already paying!
Adding 0.50% to the hard-cost of Visa/Mastercard is a very typical program that almost every merchant service company can offer called "Interchange-Plus." The thing is, MOST companies are a lot more honest about how Interchange-Plus programs work, and will explain to the merchant that the fixed cost of 0.50% (or whatever the merchant company wants the mark-up to be) is in addition to the costs charged by Visa/Mastercard. The company I'm warning you about DOES NOT tell you this, which makes them, to put it eloquently, fraudulent liars. DO NOT be fooled by deals that sound too good to be true and make sure to ALWAYS READ THE FINE PRINT BEFORE SIGNING!!!!!!!!! If you don't read the fine print and sign with said-company, you will receive your first bill which will be somewhere around 3%. You will be upset and call in to cancel, only to find out you're stuck in a 3-year contract. THAT IS THEIR BUSINESS MODEL; to say whatever they have to in order to get the contract signed! Please please please do yourself a favor and call us if you ever have questions on pricing you are being offered from other companies!!!