Uh oh: someone got got.
This time it’s Worldpay.
(Again).
Guess they started worrying that earnings were at risk with a recession on the horizon, even though inflation has pushed up prices by 10%+ which is advantageous to payments bros who have to do zero work to increase revenues.
But maybe that 10% ain’t enough to buy that new boat.
What’s a simple man to do?
Get a job?
Deliver value?
Delight customers?
Earn referrals?
LOLz. If only you knew how payments worked.
The masterminds at Worldpay, trying hard not to be outdone by Jeff Sloan and Heartland, have come out with fee that’s 0.75% of a merchant’s revenue.
Whoosh, right out the door like it never existed.
We love how specific Worldpay was about how this fee would apply, and why they were applying it.
Check out this cerebral language:
“We will now be adding a Transaction Risk fee to your account. It will be assessed on non-qualified transactions as described in your Terms and Conditions but may also be assessed on other transactions that we determine to carry a higher degree of risk.”
That last part is a doozie.
Here’s how this plays out in the real world.
Worldpay execs are at one of their weekly golfing trips.
After the group has downed 88 beers and they’ve moved onto the second hole, one of them says “Man, what are we going to do about earnings? Adyen and Stripe keep taking all our ISV relationships and are straight balls-in-the-face posterizing us on ecomm.”
To which he gets a reply, “Why don’t we just make up a fake fee? Heard ol’ Sloan-y was using his Wheel o’ Fake Fees for last quarter. We just stole a real animal of a sales guy from Global and he took a pic of ‘the Wheel’ with his phone before sending a pic of his dick to my wife. God I love this guy already and can’t wait for him to work here. Anyhow, we’ll just copy his pic. Of the Wheel, not his dick, I mean.”
After a respite of talking that’s filled with sudsy guzzling and belching that only true bros would ever understand, there are a lot of nods and hand slaps.
“Wait, wait: what will we call our fee? We need to be better than Jeff Sloan. Only a total dirtbag would use the same fee to suck his customers dry. We need a different fee to bankrupt our merchants so the street bros know we’re legit and give us cred.”
“Oh man, good point. Hmm, it would be a lot easier to think if I hadn’t already downed 17 beers. And why do people keep ringing my cell phone? Don’t they know 10 AM on a Tuesday is a sacred time for golf?! Shit’s distracting.”
Suddenly the caddy makes a comment.
“Why don’t you call it a risk fee that you can apply to anything you want?”
The Worldpay execs furrow their brows in an attempt to straighten their vision.
“What did you say?” asks one of the Worldpay leaders, wondering if this caddy might not be a competitor undercover.
“I said, why don’t you just call your fee a risk fee that way you can apply it to anything you want?”
The payments execs can’t tell if it’s the now-109 beers that they’ve drank, or if the caddy is some sort of payment genius.
“I know this is probably surprising coming from me, your caddy, but I learned payments the hard way. You see, when I was a little boy growing up in Chinatown, my parents owned a dim sum restaurant. Every year they would struggle to make money, no matter how hard they worked. As I got older and learned math I started auditing their books. It turns out my parents never made any money because our payment processor took all of our profit.”
“By the time I discovered the problems it was too late: my father had a terminal illness and we didn’t have enough money saved to pay for his medical treatment. My mother became so depressed after my father passed that she took her own life.”
“I went to live with my estranged aunt whom I’d only met briefly at a Chinese New Year event when I was 3. She called for me by private car, lived in a mansion, and never worked. I eagerly tried to learn her secrets, but she kept them to herself. One day I snuck in her closet in the hopes of catching her on one of her private calls. To my surprise, she ran this thing called an I-S-O. I didn’t know what that was, but after some research I came to learn she was in payments.”
“In a sad twist of fate I was both made an orphan and saved by payments.”
The Worldpay execs just stoof there, mouths agape.
“This has been an incredible story, young man. How can we ever repay you for your wisdom?”
“Oh, well, if you wouldn’t mind a tip when you all finish, that would be great.”
After the Worldpay Head of Sales vomits in the cup on the 18th, they crew heads to the club house. Upon receiving their bill, the troupe leaders asks to leave a tip for the caddy.
“No problem,” says the clerk. “Go ahead and enter your tip on the card terminal when you’re ready to check out.”
The Worldpay exec feels a bit guilty in leaving the tip with his card, because he knows Worldpay will make more on the transaction than the caddy. Fortunately he’s been desensitized to any humane vestiges of remorse, so it lasts only as long as it takes to swipe his card. Now it’s time to drive that Ferrari home before he blacks out.
As he gets in his car there’s a persistent buzzing in his pocket.
Hmmm, this buzzing feels stronger than the 44 beers I had… let me see what’s up…
“Hello?”
“Charles? It’s Ginny, your Treasurer. Something really odd has happened… Worldpay has no money.”
“What do you mean we have no money?” Charles asks, straightening himself up in his seat.
“I don’t know… it’s really odd. We got this charge from Douchebag’s Country Club 30 minutes ago and it’s for $94 billion.”
“What?!” screams Charles, trying to clear the fog of 44 beers.
“I don’t know, it’s scary shit. Can you go back into the country club to find out what’s going on?”
“I’m on it,” says Charles, before pounding the end key and tripping out of his Enzo.
As he slithers across the pavement to the entrance of the club house, the caddy slowly opens the club house door and asks him what’s wrong, with a wry smirk on his face.
“Is there something wrong with the bill?” mocks the caddy.
“… You… what did you do?” gasps Charles.
“Me? Oh, nothing. Well, maybe something.”
“When I started working here we weren’t making any money thanks to our payment processor. Then we noticed that you Worldpay execs had tee times four times a week. So on your 327-page club bill, in size -2 font, we notified you that we’d start passing through all the Worldpay surcharges you’ve foisted on the club. Seems fair, doesn’t it?
Charles shrieked in horror as he came face-to-face with the animal of his own making. The caddy closed the club house door and flipped the lock, leaving Charles to stew in a pile of his own vomit and feces. Behind Charles you could hear the low beep of a tow truck, carrying away the final, prized possession of yet another victim on the wrong side of payment processing.
Too bad the caddy is the only fake part of this story.
Good luck merchants. With that recession coming, you’re going to need it.
Add comment