What are you actually paying to take cards?
Not the rate on the contract — the one you really pay, which is every fee on the statement divided by everything you processed. Two figures and you have it. Nothing is sent anywhere, nothing is stored, and there is no form in the way.
Tell the calculator how your statement presents its rates and it will say what that pricing model is costing you structurally.
Two figures, both on page one.
Card volume
Usually labelled total sales, gross volume or amount submitted. Card sales only — leave out cash and cheques, or the rate comes out flattered.
Total fees
Every processing line added together, not just the discount rate. The monthly service fee, the PCI fee, the statement fee, the batch fee and the gateway all count, because you paid them all.
The interchange line
Some statements itemise interchange and assessments as their own total. If yours does, enter it — it turns an estimate into exact arithmetic. If it does not, that itself tells you something about your pricing.
A full month is better than a slow week. If your business is seasonal, run it twice on two different months and read the gap.
Only half your bill is negotiable.
Interchange goes to the bank that issued your customer’s card. It is set by Visa and Mastercard, every processor pays the same, and nobody discounts it — not us, not anyone who tells you otherwise. Everything above it is markup, and markup is the only thing a switch can move. An honest comparison is markup against markup; anyone comparing all‑in percentages is comparing your card mix, not their pricing.
Thin markup, or a card mix that is mostly debit. Not much left to win here, and we will tell you so rather than waste your afternoon.
A flat or tiered rate with the usual monthly, PCI and statement lines on top. Usually worth a look.
At this level the markup is doing most of the work, and it is normally a handful of line items rather than the headline rate.
Bands are rules of thumb for reading your own statement, not a quote and not a promise about your account. A high‑ticket B2B card mix sits higher than a coffee shop’s for reasons nobody controls.
Same cards, three different bills.
The floor, itemised
Interchange is passed through at cost and shown to you, with one stated markup on top. You can audit it. Every card type costs what it costs, so a month heavy in rewards cards costs more — and you can see exactly why.
Buckets you don’t choose
You are quoted the qualified rate. Most cards then settle as mid or non‑qualified at a much higher one. Which bucket a sale lands in depends on the card your customer pulled out, so the rate you were sold is rarely the rate you pay.
Simple, and simple is paid for
One percentage on everything. Easy to read, and it quietly averages out: you overpay on debit to subsidise the rewards cards. Fine at low volume, expensive once volume grows.
The questions that actually come up.
Is this a quote?
No. Your effective rate and our markup are both exact arithmetic. The one thing a calculator cannot know is your interchange, which depends on the mix of cards your customers actually use. That is the only reason to send the statement.
Do you store what I type here?
No. The arithmetic runs in your browser. Nothing is submitted, nothing is saved, and there is no form between you and the answer. Close the tab and it is gone.
Why is my effective rate higher than the rate I was quoted?
Because the quoted rate almost never includes the monthly service fee, the PCI fee, the statement fee, the batch fee or the gateway — and on a smaller month those fixed costs are a larger share of a smaller volume. The quoted rate describes one line of your bill. The effective rate describes the bill.
What is a good effective rate?
There is no single answer, because interchange is not the same for every business. A shop taking mostly debit has a genuinely lower floor than one taking corporate cards. Compare your markup to someone else’s markup; comparing all‑in percentages between two different businesses tells you almost nothing.
What do you charge?
Interchange + 0.50% + 10¢ in person, interchange + 0.75% + 25¢ keyed. No contract, no monthly fee, no PCI fee. That is the number the calculator uses for our side, so what you see here is what we would actually bill.
What if switching would not save me anything?
Then we say so. If your effective rate is already near the interchange floor there is nothing for us to win, and telling you otherwise would waste both our time.