Important Lessons:
Learn from our Industry Experience

Price
» What's your Rate?
» Acquisition Pricing
» Price Structure
» What's Interchange

Service
» Service Savings
» Personal Service

Terms
» Read the Fine Print
» Application vs. Terms
» Cancellation Fees
» Equipment Leasing

Risk
» Convenience Payment
» Credit is Important

Pricing Structure

Just as important as "What's your Rate?" is "What's your Rate Structure?".

We talk about rate structure because pricing is just not simple anymore. Complexity in how rates are calculated from one card to the next can have a significant impact on your bottom line cost. Here are some examples of how rate and fee structure can impact your merchant account:

» Watch for monthly statement fees, batch closing fees, account maintenance fees, monthly minimum fees and even annual fees. These fees can add significant cost to your effective rate, especially for low volume merchants.

» Merchants with large ticket items or the potential for a large sale transaction should also structure their rate with a per item fee.

» Charging discount on Gross sales or Net sales after credits and returns can affect your cost.

» Eliminate your "per transaction" fees for American Express with PIP or Reverse PIP service. These fees are unrelated to MasterCard (MC) and Visa pricing and simply pad the overall bottom line cost of processing service. Why would you want your pricing structured so that the more American Express transactions you process, the more it costs you to accept Mastercard and Visa? Eliminate these fees and restructure your pricing.

» Two rates- one for Visa and one for MC. As competing card companies, they each carry their own individual cost and market share. Examine the effects of card share, average ticket per card, and Interchange fees for your business.

» Four rates- Visa credit, Visa Check, MC credit and MC debit. Or how about a one rate, tiered, pass through or Interchange plus pricing plans? Vantage has a robust billing system to help you take advantage of the best pricing plan for you business.

» Artificially increasing the price of your non-qualified transactions may lower your qualified rate but increase your overall costs. Always pay attention to your effective cost by dividing the total charged your account by just your MasterCard and Visa monthly volume.

» Charging per authorization vs. charging per settled transaction.

Fee structure is the most important element to good pricing. Let us compile a complete savings analysis for your review.