It’s pretty rare to catch a bank involved in the butt diddling of merchants, but here we are.
We’ve seen Elavon do some suspicious stuff over the years, but never Chase.
In doing some research others have told us that they have seen Chase increase rates before, so there might be a precedent.
Not sure why, frankly.
Banks have always offered low pricing on processing to win the banking business.
So the below is shocking.
That said, this was sent to a merchant with only a handful of stores, and each store received a different rate increase.
Is something wrong with Chase’s systems, or are they looking for ways to fund all their payment initiatives without creating more value for their customers?
This notice is a 20 bps increase across the board.
20 bps is about the average margin the card networks make, but way below the margins of the issuing banks and merchant acquirers, the latter of whom manipulate all sorts of shit to bilk merchants out of money.
We love that Chase professes that they just had to increase fees to handle the increase in maintenance and processing cost.
This is just a red flag for incompetence.
How could fees have gone up?
Your increase is on top of interchange increases, so you can’t make interchange the fall guy.
Processing is not a product that requires R&D.
Hell, it’s not even a product.
Where’s the justification for the increase in cost?
Here’s a quick reminder of data storage and processing costs over time:
Oh yea, it’s really up and to the right and we need to add 20 bps to keep the lights on over here.
Payment Authorities also sent us another Chase statement that reiterates the 20 bps increase.
Just a SWAG, but 20 bps is probably double Chase’s margin.
Whom do we have to thank for such magnanimity?