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.
These statements come from February and March of 2020.
TSYS
First we’ll look at TSYS statements. TSYS, which is now a part of Global, has been quick to demonstrate more malfeasance as of late. What are the odds that this is the “revenue synergy” Jeff Sloan, CEO of Global Payments, talked about in the acquisition? In other words, fake fees galore.
Here TSYS is increasing their PCI non-compliance fee to $125 come March. This fee is normally $20-$50. Make sure to take the PCI survey and scan or you will be charged this fee. It is easily avoidable.
This next one comes from TSYS Cayan.
This account saw a base rate increase of 0.25% on this account. It is a common theme Merchant Cost has been seeing on the Cayan accounts as of late.
Lastly there’s questionable activity from a TSYS Health Services account.
You’ll notice that each line here ends in some parenthetical number. This parenthesis is almost like an earmark, indicating that the line item was marked up by 0.10%.
Here the same tactic is used again, but this time it’s a 0.30% surcharge on top of the service markup TSYS already charges.
Lastly we see TSYS charging an AWS fee and annual PCI fee. However, Merchant Cost tells us TSYS already issued annual fees this year. But who could resist having Christmas come twice?
Global Payments
Before we leave Global let’s look at a statement where Global pretty much threw the kitchen sink of fees at a merchant.
Per Merchant Cost, the irony here is this merchant shut their account in 2018, but the paperwork was never filed on Global’s end. It resulted in a $7,000 refund, however the merchant had to agree not to file legal charges in order to obtain their refund. So classy over there at Global: how do they do it?
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