ReformingRetail is continuing with a payments statement obfuscation series. We call it SOS for short, and it’s coincidentally a very appropriate acronym. We aim to publish an article in the series twice per month, but it really depends on the shenanigans that we see in the market. Both the statements and analysis are being provided by Merchant Cost Consulting, an advisory group of payments experts that helps merchants lower their processing rates.
Today’s statements come from TSYS, Elavon, Global, and North American Bancard from the month of December. Like we saw with the December statements from First Data Merchant Cost Consulting (MCC) is seeing the Mastercard price increases for transactions that are less than a $1. These fees are non-negotiable and part of interchange.
The next fee was found on TSYS Cayan. Here we have a made up fee called “compliance service package”. What compliance is this fee referring to? Pick one: compliance for the boogeyman, compliance for alien invasions, or compliance for unicorn rainbows.
MCC has successfully refunded and removed this fee from their merchants. Also note that because TSYS was acquired by Global Payments we expect a lot more of these made up fees as part of, “revenue synergies” announced by Global’s management team regarding the acquisition. We’ll say it again here, but Global has proven time and time again it buys portfolios that are priced low where it sees an opportunity to add fee after fee for zero in value for “revenue synergies”.
For example, below is a Global Payments statement from December 2019:
Here Global has added a fee structured as a percentage of total volume processed and as a per-transaction fee (because one made up fee just isn’t enough, you know?). These fees are the sneakiest kind because they’re the hardest to spot, and they can have huge impacts for larger merchants. In this specific example Global added an additional 0.09% to the total volume and $0.10 to the number of transactions. MCC got this fee refunded and removed going forward.
Then came Merchant E-Solutions and Worldpay, both of whom added annual fees at a minimum. Merchant E-Solutions added both an annual maintenance fee and PCI fees.
Worldpay got lazy and only added a $199 annual fee. C’mon guys, show some initiative here! Let’s at least keep adding zeros to your pathetic, loner annual fee if we can’t think of other fees to throw on statements: these merchants aren’t going to bankrupt themselves!
Not to be outdone on the annual fees was Elavon, who added an annual fee of $99.99. MCC has had this fee waived.
We’ll wrap up with North American Bancard. MCC says that the PCI fees for NAB are increasing dramatically relative to other processors in the market. “NAB’s descriptions are self-explanatory pending the type of merchant account you have, but they’re extremely high,” says MCC.
At any opening processors seem overly willing to add fees for make-believe items and categories. Meanwhile the merchants are none the wiser and getting screwed. Processors: 1,000,000,000; merchants: 0.
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