7 Smart Tips to Saving Money on Merchant Account Fees

How to Save Money on Merchant Account Fees

One of the biggest challenges of running a business is keeping up with growing fees on just about anything. But since there are essential services that your business needs to function properly, you have to live with some fees that come with them.

So what if someone tells you that you can still cut down some of these fees? Of course, you’d be excited.

If you have payment processing service that has huge fees, here are seven smart tips to cut down these costs and help you save money:

[1] Don’t be afraid to negotiate.

If you’ve been loyal to the same payment processor for a long time now, then maybe it’s time to talk to them about giving you a lower rate for your continued patronage. A lot of companies would offer this to long-term clients or those with growing businesses.

[2] Look closely at fee structures

Review your contract again and look at how your fee structure work. Maybe you’re missing some details that you shouldn’t be paying or you could switch to a bundle program that will charge you lower than what you’re paying for now.

[3] Encourage the use of debit cards

If you are using a tiered pricing system as your fee structure, you should encourage your customers to use debit card for payments because it falls under the low, qualified rate, which means that you can save money when customers use debit instead of credit cards that have higher processing rates.

[4] Set a minimum purchase amount for card transactions

Since you are paying at least $0.30 per transaction, you can’t just let a customer charge a $1 purchase on his card because you’ll lose more money in the process.

Although it’s okay to charge whatever amount if you’re using a flat payment percentage kind of structure, you need to set a minimum purchase amount if you’re using a service with a tiered pricing system or interchange plus pricing.

[5] Always let your customer key in information

This is especially important if you’re using a tiered pricing system that charges more for bigger margins of error. Have customers insert their card on the terminal and never let your staff key in information that could lead to mistakes that will give you so much hassle in the long run.

[6] Find a provider that offers a personalized service

No matter how efficient your payment system is, you will encounter issues at some point. Since you can’t afford to have a long downtime, you need a provider that could offer you excellent customer service when you need it.

[7] Read the fine print of your contract

Although most big merchant account providers will lay down everything for you in terms of payments, there are some that will charge you small additional merchant account fees that could add up in the long run.

Ask about sign-up fees, installation/upgrade fees, monthly minimums and monthly maintenance fees.

Although paying for merchant account fees is part of running your business, following these tips will help you save some money to use for other things.