posnexus Chicago · United States
Talk to us1-833-870-2756
US merchant accounts · interchange‑plus

Every line on your statement is either cost, or someone’s margin.

Merchant processing statement

Retail / food service · single location
PeriodMar 1–31
Account•••• 4417
Page1 of 4
Illustrative example — not a real statement

Summary

Card volumeVisa · Mastercard · Discover$48,500.00
Transactionscard‑present1,412
Average ticketvolume ÷ transactions$34.35

Processing — cost & pricing

Interchangepass‑through, set by the networks942.68
Assessments & network feespass‑through102.41
Discount rate0.89% of $48,500.00431.65242.50
Authorization1,412 @ $0.15211.80141.20

Other fees & service charges

Monthly service feeaccount maintenance19.950.00
Statement feeper statement produced9.950.00
PCI non‑compliance feequestionnaire not on file34.950.00
Batch header fee23 batches @ $0.255.750.00
Non‑qualified surcharge1.29% of $11,840.00 downgraded152.740.00
Gateway / virtual terminala real service if you key or invoicekept24.95
Total fees
this month
was$1,936.83 $1,453.74
Effective rate
3.99%3.00%

Repriced on the published PosNexus US rate: interchange + 0.50% + 10¢ card‑present. Interchange and assessments are pass‑through at cost — identical on either statement.

Two of the lines on it are real cost and nobody can discount them. The rest are priced by whoever sold you the account. Send last month’s statement and we’ll mark up your real one exactly like this — line by line.

Get my line-by-line breakdown → or call1-833-870-2756
700+ merchantsChicago3+ yearsNo contract, no cancellation fee

What this is. A constructed example, not a document from any processor — no company is named and no business is depicted. The fee lines are the ones that turn up most often on padded statements. Every figure is arithmetic on one stated month of volume, shown so you can check it. Your statement will look different. That is the reason to send it.

Same month. Same cards. Same volume.

Nothing about the business changed in the numbers above. Only who was pricing it did.

Effective rate
3.99%3.00%
total fees ÷ card volume
Fees, one month
$1,936.83$1,453.74
on $48,500.00 of volume
Difference
$483.09
per month · $5,797.08 a year
Send us yours

We’ll do exactly this to your real statement.

One month is enough. A phone photo of the summary page is enough. We read the actual lines rather than guessing at them, then call you with the marked-up copy and a quote against it — and if we can’t beat what you’re on, we say so and you keep your processor.

  1. 01
    You send one statement

    Fill in the five fields. We’ll reply with a secure way to send the pages — or read them off to us on the phone.

  2. 02
    A person marks it up

    Interchange and assessments separated from markup, every fee line identified, the effective rate worked out. No software, no instant estimate.

  3. 03
    You get the number and decide

    Your real monthly difference, next to the published rate. No contract and no cancellation fee either way.

Get my line-by-line breakdown

Five fields. A person reads your statement, not a calculator.

We need a name to say hello to.
What’s on the sign out front?
We’ll send the quote here — check the format.
Ten digits so a human can call.
A rough band is fine.
We need this before we can call, text or email you.

Takes about a minute. No contract, no cancellation fee.

Read it yourself

What each of those lines actually is.

You don’t need us to do this. Pull last month’s statement out and check it against the list — most of it is findable in ten minutes, and knowing which line is which is the whole skill.

Interchange — real cost

Set by Visa, Mastercard and Discover, and paid to the bank that issued your customer’s card. It varies by card type and how the card was taken. It is identical for every processor in the United States. Nobody discounts it; anyone who says they do is discounting something else and calling it interchange.

Assessments & network fees — real cost

The card networks’ own charge for running the rails, part percentage and part per‑transaction. Also pass‑through, also the same everywhere. Between them, these two lines are the floor. Everything below them on your statement is a pricing decision somebody made.

01

Monthly service fee

$19.95 on the example

A flat charge for the account existing. It is not tied to volume, transactions or anything you can point at on the statement.

It isn’t automatically wrong — some accounts genuinely carry a monthly platform cost. The test is whether it was disclosed as a number before you signed, or whether it simply appeared. Ask what service it pays for. If nobody can name one, it is margin with a label on it.

02

Statement fee

$9.95 on the example

A charge for producing the document that tells you what you were charged — a leftover from when statements were printed and posted.

Some processors still bill it on paper statements and waive it on electronic ones. If you are being billed for a statement you read as a PDF, that is worth one phone call.

03

PCI non‑compliance fee

$34.95 on the example — usually avoidable

This is the one most worth knowing about, because it is the one merchants most often pay for years without needing to.

PCI DSS compliance is real: if you take cards you are required to complete a short annual self‑assessment questionnaire, and for most small merchants it is a form, not an audit. The non‑compliance fee is charged every month until that questionnaire is on file. It is not a penalty from the card networks — it is billed by the processor.

Ask your current processor for your SAQ link and finish it. The fee should stop. If you have been paying it a long time, ask about that too.

04

Batch header fee

$5.75 on the example — 23 × $0.25

Charged every time you settle the day’s transactions. Priced per batch, so it scales with how often you close out, not with what you sell.

Two terminals batching separately, or a shift that closes twice a day, quietly doubles it for no additional service. Worth checking how many batches you are actually being billed for.

05

Non‑qualified surcharge

$152.74 on the example — the biggest one

This line only exists under tiered pricing. The processor sorts your transactions into buckets — qualified, mid‑qualified, non‑qualified — and downgrades anything the bucket rules don’t like: rewards cards, business and corporate cards, keyed entry, a batch settled late.

You are quoted the qualified rate. You are billed the downgrade. Because customers choose which card to pull out, you have almost no control over how much of your volume lands in the expensive bucket — which is exactly why it is the largest padding line on most statements.

Under interchange‑plus there are no buckets. The real interchange category is shown for what it is and the markup is the same number on every single transaction. That is the structural difference, and it is the reason this line goes to zero rather than getting smaller.

06

Gateway / virtual terminal

$24.95 on the example — kept, on purpose

A gateway is a genuine service if you key transactions, send invoices, or take payments online. It is padding if every sale you make is a card dipped or tapped at your counter and you have never opened it.

We left this line in the after‑figure above rather than cancelling it, because pretending a real service costs nothing would make the total look better and the page less honest. Check whether you are paying for a gateway you don’t use — that is a cancellation, not a negotiation.

Your money

The batch closes itself. The money lands at 7:00 AM.

Cash flow is the other half of what a processor is actually for, and it is easier to verify than a rate: you either had the money on Tuesday morning or you didn’t.

Evening
You stop taking cards

The batch closes overnight on its own. Nothing to remember, nothing to press before you lock up.

Overnight
It settles

The day’s transactions go out to the networks and the funding file is built while you’re closed.

7:00 AM
Next business day

The full amount is in your bank account — next‑business‑day funding at 7:00 AM, not “two to three business days”.

The honest answers

The five things merchants ask before they’ll send a statement.

Is there a contract?
No contract and no cancellation fee. There is no term you are locked into and nothing to buy your way out of. If it stops working for you, you leave. That is the whole answer — it is also the only reason we’re comfortable asking you to compare on the numbers rather than on promises.
What does it really cost?
Interchange + 0.50% + 10¢ when the card is present, interchange + 0.75% + 25¢ keyed or online. Interchange and assessments are passed through at cost — we don’t mark them up and we couldn’t discount them if we wanted to. The 0.50% and the 10¢ is our entire margin, and it is the same number on every transaction whether your customer pays with a debit card or a premium rewards card. If you want a gateway, or hardware, those are quoted as their own line and named out loud.
My current processor has a termination fee.
Some agreements have one and some don’t, and the ones that do often bury it in a clause about “liquidated damages” rather than calling it a termination fee. Send the agreement along with the statement and we’ll read the clause and tell you the actual number before you decide anything. We won’t guess at it on a web page, and we won’t promise to cover it — if the number makes switching a bad idea this month, it’s better that you know that from us.
How long does switching take?
It depends on your business type, your bank, and how quickly underwriting comes back — and any page that gives you a confident number in hours is guessing. We’ll give you the real timeline on the first call, once we know what kind of business we’re opening an account for. What we can tell you now is that your existing terminal keeps working right up until the new account is live, so there is no day where you can’t take a card.
Who do I talk to when something breaks?
A dedicated account manager, not a ticket queue. The same person who reads your statement and quotes the account is the person you call when a terminal stops talking to the network at lunch rush. We’re a Chicago company serving merchants across the United States, and we’ve been doing this for 3+ years across 700+ merchants — small enough that you get a name, long enough to have seen your problem before.

Find out what your own bottom line says.

One statement, one phone call, one number. If it turns out you’re already well priced, we’ll tell you that — it costs us a quote and saves you a switch.

Hardware options are available with a qualifying merchant account if you need a terminal — it’s an option we can price on the call, not the reason to move.

Get my line-by-line breakdown → or call1-833-870-2756
Call us Get my breakdown