Other than the rates and fees for processing the actual credit /debit cards, there may be other legitimate fees that may apply in order to maintain a merchant account and provide security. Here are some:

Monthly statement fee – Which will provide you with a trail of all the transactions you have accepted on that monthly cycle (just like a bank statement).

Transaction Fee – Is a fee collected by the merchant account provider on any successful sale or refunds issued on a swiped or manually entered transaction and is always a fixed amount added to the percentage.

Payment gateway or virtual terminal monthly Fee – This is a fee that is charged to businesses that have a website/e-commerce business or need to use a computer processing software to charge their customers. It will enable the secure transmission of the cardholder’s data from time of purchase until the funds settle into your bank account.

Wireless Fee – Is a monthly fee charged to be able to use a wireless network in order to accept credit card transactions via a wireless device or terminal.

Monthly minimum – This is a fee that is imposed if your credit card charges to not equate to the very minimum cost to maintain the merchant account. You can expect this fee to range anywhere from $15.00 to $35.00 and you should ask about it because this may result in a high monthly charge.

Batch Fee – This is a fee that is most often collected once a day, at the end of the business day, in order to submit the collection of all daily charges you have made and send them to your bank account in one shot.

AVS (Address verification system) – This is a fee that can be applied to businesses that manually enter their transactions as opposed to swiping them. This is a regulation mandated By Visa, MasterCard which verifies that the billing address given by the customer matches the one on the customer credit card.

Annual Fee – May also be called a subscription fee or a membership fee which can be charged by the acquirer in order to maintain a merchant account and provide all annual protocol updates.

Chargeback Fee – Is a situational fee applied when and if a cardholder initiates a dispute on the charge that was applied to his/her credit card. The merchant will have 10 days to submit all proof of purchase such as a signed receipts or proof of delivery etc. in order to win the dispute and regain the charged amount.

Retrieval Fee – Is when a merchant cannot produce a copy of sales receipt or invoice pertaining to a cardholder’s information in regards to a chargeback dispute.

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