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Will there ever be transparency in credit and debit card merchant processing fees?

Merchant statements can be fairly complex documents, and it is often difficult to interpret how credit and debit card fees are being applied to your operation. If you have interchange plus pricing, the credit card ecosystem can be even more complex. While interchange plus pricing is supposed to provide transparency between interchange, card network and processing fees, it can oftentimes create more confusion. Furthermore, these statements, which sometimes resemble more of a cell phone bill, can be a great place for processors to sneak in a few extra fees with similar names. 

In order to understand pricing transparency, let’s first break down each of these fees:

  • Interchange rates are set by each card network and vary by card type, merchant type, and whether the card is physically present or not during the transaction. Interchange fees are paid by the merchant and passed to the cardholder’s bank that issued the credit or debit card.
  • Card Network or Association fees are various fees for using a specific card network’s platform. 
  • Processing fees are what the payment provider charges to provide the merchant processing service. This grouping includes transaction fees, and ancillary fees, such as chargeback fees, PCI fees, reporting fees, etc. 

Unlike other processors, Passport is tackling parking payment processing transparency without inundating clients with 25 page merchant statements that are anything but transparent. 

Our approach is simple. Clients pay a single, competitive merchant processing fee across all card types and card networks that will meet or beat your current merchant processing costs. 

How can Passport meet or beat your current processing costs? 

Passport is a market leader in the mobile pay parking segment, and has negotiated discounted interchange rates that apply to small transaction size parking payments. In other words, we solve for those ridiculously high card fees on a $3 transaction size.

We can also tackle the ancillary fees that add up by simply removing them. No PCI fees, no statement or reporting fees, no minimums, and no chargeback fees on our mobile pay parking solution. Our combined business model of mobile pay parking and payment processing allows us to pass these savings on to client organizations while also providing the reporting advantages of a vertically integrated parking and payments service. 

To learn how you can save more on small transaction size parking payments, contact a sales representative today.