THE MOVE — The three fees inside your processing fee.
Issue #1 was which card to PAY with. This is what it costs you when someone pays YOU. Same cards, opposite seat — and this seat is where the money quietly leaks.
Every swipe splits into three layers, and almost nobody selling you a terminal wants you to know this:
Interchange. Set by the card networks, paid to your customer's bank. This is roughly 70% of what you pay, and it's non-negotiable. Nobody can give you a discount on it — anyone who says they can is lying.
Assessments. Kept by Visa and Mastercard themselves. The smallest piece. Also non-negotiable.
Processor markup. The only piece you can negotiate — and the piece that's most often quietly inflated on your statement. This is where processors make their money, and it's why two businesses with the same customers and the same volume can pay very different rates.
The one number that matters: your effective rate = total fees ÷ total volume on one month's statement. Ignore every rate your processor advertises and just do this math. If it comes out well above ~2.5% and you're not a high-risk business, you're overpaying — probably on the markup, possibly on the pricing model.
Three moves, in order:
Get off tiered pricing. It's the most opaque model and usually the most expensive. "Qualified / mid-qualified / non-qualified" is a sentence designed so you can't compare it to anything.
Switch to interchange-plus once you're past ~$5k/month in volume. Interchange passes through at cost, the markup is one published number — that's it. A markup around 0.40% + 8¢ per transaction is what good looks like. (This is the model where the sales pitch is the least magical-sounding. That's a feature.)
Keep cards read as present whenever you can. In-person swipes/taps cost less than typed-in card numbers, because card-not-present means higher fraud and chargeback risk. If you invoice online, consider a card reader at the job instead of a payment link — same customer, cheaper transaction.
What about passing the fee to customers? There are two versions, and the difference is the whole game:
Surcharging (adding a fee at checkout): credit cards ONLY — never debit or prepaid. Visa caps it at 3%, Mastercard at 4%, and never more than your actual cost. It's banned outright for private businesses in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, and Puerto Rico (Texas has a ban on the books that's disputed and unenforced). Oklahoma caps it at 2% or actual cost, whichever is less; Colorado lets you use 2% or your actual cost. You must notify your processor 30 days ahead, post notice at the entrance/checkout, and show the surcharge as its own receipt line.
Dual pricing / cash discount (posting a cash price and a card price): legal in all 50 states — federal law protects it. The rule is simple: post the card price AND the cash price before the customer pays. If you post one price and add a fee at the terminal, the networks treat it as a surcharge and every rule above applies.
One more thing to file away: a Visa/Mastercard settlement hearing reported for November 2026 could eventually allow surcharging by card brand (e.g., premium cards only). That's not in effect — don't let anyone sell you on it yet.
The point: you can't negotiate interchange, so stop wasting energy there. Get your effective rate, compare it to ~2.5%, and if you're high, negotiate the only number that's actually negotiable — or take the same business to a processor whose markup is honest.
BY THE NUMBERS
1.5%–3.5% — the typical all-in processing cost per transaction for a US small business. If someone quotes you under 1.5% all-in, check what's excluded.
~2.36% — the average Visa + Mastercard processing cost (Merchants Payments Coalition, 2025 figure, up from 2.35% in 2024).
2.6% + 15¢ in person / 3.3% + 30¢ online — Square's published Free rate (Oct 2026). Flat-rate benchmarks run roughly 2.29% + 9¢ to 3.49% + 49¢ depending on how you take cards.
0.40% + 8¢ — Helcim's published interchange-plus markup. This is your "what good looks like" reference when you get quotes.
0.5%–1.5% — what debit transactions cost (Durbin Amendment caps for large banks) vs. credit. One reason high-debit businesses have lower effective rates.
TOOL OF THE WEEK
Your own statement, audited in 10 minutes. Pull last month's processing statement and do two things: (1) divide total fees by total volume — that's your effective rate; (2) if it's well above 2.5%, get two interchange-plus quotes and compare them to that number, not to each other. No vendor endorsed here yet — the point is the math, not the logo.
FROM THE GROUPS
A real question from a small-shop owner this past week, paraphrased and anonymized: they sell low-ticket items, worked out that a small sale loses nearly a fifth of its price to card fees, and asked whether to set a card minimum, add a surcharge, or just eat the fee — worried a minimum would cost them customers.
Short answer: the fair number isn't a percentage anyone quotes you — it's your effective rate on your own statement. Under ~2.5% all-in for a normal-risk business is reasonable; well over it means the markup or the pricing model is what's gouging you, not the card networks. And on the minimum question specifically: a sign saves you pennies per sale and risks the whole ticket when a customer walks — fix the plan (that fixed per-transaction fee is what's brutal on small tickets) before you put up a sign.
HOUSE SLOT
The other side of the card. Last week was the cards you PAY with — this week was the fees you pay when someone pays YOU. The full setup is still in The 2026 Business Credit Card Stack: the exact cards, current offers, and the 30-day sequence — grab it here.
ONE QUESTION FOR YOU
Do you take cards in person, online, or both? Reply with one word — person, online, or both. Next week's Move is chosen by your answers.
— Liam
Disclosure: "Some links in this issue are affiliate links — if you sign up through them, we may earn a commission at no cost to you. Sponsored slots are always labeled. We only cover tools we'd use in our own business."
Disclaimer: "Money Moves is general education for business owners, not personalized financial, tax, or legal advice. Offers, rates, and rules change — verify details with the issuer, your processor, and your own CPA before acting."