The notice arrived. It was a sentence on page four.
Rate increase notices are real, legally sufficient and almost perfectly designed not to be read. Knowing the four places they appear and the phrases they use turns an invisible event into a thirty-second monthly check.
What this page settles.
Three questions, in the order most people ask them.
The four places a notice appears
A message block on your monthly statement. The most common by a distance. Usually a short paragraph in a “messages”, “notices” or “important information” area, frequently on the last page, often in smaller type than everything else. In most merchant agreements this is sufficient notice.
A notice in the online portal. Visible when you log in, which many merchants do rarely.
An email, to whichever address was on the application. For a business that has changed hands, changed bookkeepers or used a generic address at signup, that may be an inbox nobody reads.
A letter. Rare now, and the only format most people would actually notice, which is presumably related.
What it is essentially never: a call from the person who sold you the account.
The language to look for
Increases are rarely described as increases. The phrasings that recur:
“Effective [date], the following schedule will be updated…”
“Changes to your fee schedule”, with the changes in a table rather than in the sentence.
“Adjustment to pass-through costs”, which may be genuine interchange pass-through or may be more than that.
“Annual compliance and network cost adjustment”, which bundles several things under one heading.
“Your [specific fee] will be $X effective [date]” — the clearest version, and the least common.
“Continued use of the service constitutes acceptance.” Where you see this, the clock has started.
The thing they have in common is that none of them contain the word “increase” and none of them tell you what it means in dollars for your business. That is not an accident; working out the dollar impact requires knowing your volume and card mix, which the notice is not going to do for you.
Why the format is what it is
Worth being even-handed about, because there are two honest reasons and one less so.
A change is usually a schedule, not a number. An interchange pass-through affects hundreds of categories differently depending on the merchant. A notice that said “your costs will rise by $40 a month” would be wrong for most recipients.
Your agreement already defines what counts as notice, and you agreed to it. A processor giving notice in the contractually specified form is complying, not evading. Rate review clauses.
And a notice nobody reads is a notice nobody objects to. Which is the part that explains the type size, the page placement and the vocabulary. Both things are true at once: the format is defensible and it is also chosen.
What to do when you find one
Work out what it means in money. Take the change and apply it to your own monthly volume and transaction count. A 0.10% increase on $40,000 a month is $40. A $10 monthly fee is $120 a year. Until you have a dollar figure you cannot decide whether to care.
Establish what kind of change it is. Pass-through of a network cost, which everybody has to absorb, or a margin increase, which is a commercial decision you can respond to. If you are on interchange-plus, the markup line tells you. Interchange-plus pricing.
Check whether your agreement gives you a right to terminate following a fee change, and if so, how long the window is. This is the only real remedy in the clause and the window is usually short. Agreement red flags.
Ask, in writing. “What is this change, what is driving it, and what will it cost me at my volume?” A good answer names the specific costs. A vague answer is itself informative.
Then decide. A $40 a month increase on an otherwise good arrangement is not worth a migration. A pattern of increases is. Who is actually cheapest.
The habit that catches it
No clause will protect you from a notice you do not read. A routine will.
Monthly, thirty seconds. Record your effective rate — total fees divided by total card volume — in a spreadsheet. The calculator.
Monthly, thirty seconds. Read the statement messages block. That is where the notice is.
Quarterly, ten minutes. Compare the fee summary line by line against the same statement from three months ago. New lines and changed amounts are obvious when you look and invisible when you do not.
Annually, ten minutes. Compare your current effective rate to what you were quoted when you signed. This is the check that catches the slow drift — three increases of 0.08% over two years, each properly noticed, none individually worth reacting to, together worth half a point.
That last one is the whole game. Nobody is going to send you a notice saying “your rate is now half a point above what we quoted you in 2024.” Why the bill went up.
When an increase is not a notice
Three things that raise your bill with no notice at all, because none of them are price changes.
Card mix. More premium rewards cards this month means a higher effective rate with nothing changed. Nobody notifies you because nothing happened. Seasonality and card mix.
Downgrades. Transactions failing to qualify — keyed sales, late batches, commercial cards without data. Procedural, fixable, and frequently worth more than any notified increase. Non-qualified surcharges.
Fixed fees against lower volume. A quiet month spreads the same monthly fees over less volume, which lifts the effective rate on its own.
Which is why the monthly record matters more than the notices do: it is the only thing that lets you tell a price change from everything else.
What we charge
Interchange + 0.50% + 10¢ in person, interchange + 0.75% + 25¢ keyed, with no contract, no monthly fee, no monthly minimum and no termination fee.
The markup is a published number and it appears on every statement, so a change to it would be visible rather than noticed. And with no term, you could act on it the same month — which is the only version of this clause that is actually symmetrical.
While we are on the subject
Do processors have to notify me of rate increases?
Under most merchant agreements, yes — but the agreement also defines what counts as notice, and a message on your statement generally satisfies it.
Where exactly is the notice on my statement?
Usually in a messages or notices block, often on the last page or in a margin, in smaller type than the rest of the statement.
Can I reject an increase?
Generally not. Most agreements deem continued processing to be acceptance. Some give a short right to terminate without penalty following a change — check yours.
My rate went up and I never saw a notice. What now?
Ask, in writing, when and how notice was given, and for a copy. Then compare your effective rate across months to establish what actually changed.