Tiered Pricing Structure
Understand how pricing works so there are no surprises.

How the Credit Card Industry Works

Merchant account pricing can seem overly complicated and nearly impossible to fully understand. Mostly, that's because it is. It's based on a system of mutiple layers and each layer has a cost, sometimes without much transparency.

Swipe Fast is a reseller for different processing banks, which themselves are a layer on top of banks, which are a layer on top of Visa/Mastercard. You might think that it would then be cheaper to cut out the middle men and go straight to a local bank or the processing bank. In reality, this is rarely ever the case. All banks mark up their rates so that they can sustain their business and hedge against risk. When there's fraud or chargebacks, the cardholder is never responsible for the amount, and Visa/Mastercard are never responsible. That means, if the merchant doesn't pay, the processing banks have to pay. They need increased profits from transactions to help offset those losses.

To resellers, like Swipe Fast, they offer rates below what are offered to consumers. Since we have lower overhead, we can afford to offer the same service at a lower rate. You still get everything the bank provides, you can still call them 24/7 for customer support, it just costs you less. Also, if you're ever dissatisfied, instead of hitting a dead-end with the bank, you can call us and we'll use our leverage with the bank to resolve it, or if we have to, coordinate a smooth switch to another processor.

Tiered Pricing

This is by far the most common merchant account pricing structure. All of the many different types of underlying transaction percentage rates are bundled into 3 tiers.

Relaying all of the various interchange conditions that translate into these 3 tiers is nearly impossible, so it's usually described in more general terms and then dealt with afterwards on a case-by-case basis.

• Discount Rate - the cheapest and most-often quoted transaction rate. This is what you're charged if everything is perfect, which usually means it's not a business credit card, the card is present or there's Address Verification and CVV data sent and the underlying banks consider it low risk.
• Mid-Qual Rate - one step above discount. This can be more common for internet merchants, and is for transactions considered to carry more risk or that have a higher underlying cost.
• Non-Qual Rate - the highest rate, and the most you'll ever be charged on a transaction. Transactions in this tier are ones that are considered the most risky, or carry the most underlying cost. If your transactions are being charged at this rate, usually there are steps you can take as a merchant to stop it, like including more security options in your checkout process.

   

  * Follow the links on the right to see our 3-tier rates for internet and retail accounts.

Transaction Fees

In addition to the percentage rate fees, there are flat fees associated with credit card transactions. The most typical ones are below, and our standard prices are in bold:

• Auth Fee: A flat fee for every authorization (ours: $0.20-0.25).
• AVS Fee: A fee for using Address Verification (ours: FREE).
• Batch Fee: A fee for closing out your transactions at the end of the day (ours: FREE).
• Gateway Fee:An additional transaction fee for using an internet gateway (ours: FREE)*.
• Voice Auth: A fee for phoning in a transaction to manually verify it over the phone (ours: $1.50).
• Chargeback Fee: A rare fee for a customer having their bank reverse a disputed charge you couldn't resolve with them directly (ours: $25).

Monthly Fees

Merchant accounts also come with recurring flat fees, which can often be surprising. The most typical ones are below, and our standard prices are in bold:

• Monthly Fee: A flat fee per month.(ours: $20-25).
• Monthly Minimum: The minimum amount the processor wants to make on your account in fees, otherwise they charge you it outright as a fee (ours: FREE).
• Reporting Fee: A fee for getting online access or receiving monthly reports (ours: FREE).
• Customer Support Fee: Some processor charge for getting phone or email support (ours: FREE).
• Gateway Fee:An monthly fee for using an internet gateway (ours: FREE)*.
• PCI Scanning: A monthly or annual fee for the industry-required PCI compliance service (ours: FREE).

Discover Card and American Express

The tiered pricing above is for Visa/Mastercard. Discover and American Express don't use the same multi-layer system, so their rates are set and passed through to you.

For your convenience, we can submit an application to them on your behalf, and coordinate with the processing bank to enable these cards for your account.

Our Pricing Philosophy

We don't want you to be surprised by any charges, and we want you to know what you're getting into before you sign. In our online application, on the final review page, we include the full contract and all the terms and conditions from the processing bank, so you can see all the details if you want. You also receive an emailed copy after signing.

We try our best to simplify this complex industry, and present a very competitive, affordable, easy to understand offering.

The processors we work with do require a contract term and charge a termination fee. We never mark this fee up and make no profit from it. Almost always, issues can be resolved without them charging it, including renegotiating pricing terms if necessary. Also, it is usually not applied if you go out of business or stop accepting credit cards altogether. This is something they require, and we'll continue to push for its removal. You can see the the contract term and cancellation fee for your specific processor in the application contract text on the Review page of your application, before signing.

* Gateway pricing assumes our standard Internet offering with an Authorize.net-compatible gateway. Using Authorize.net instead of our gateway incurs additional fees that are passed through to you.