You simply cannot fathom the effort required to create such revenue schemes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You need a rat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A spinning wheel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And a list of fabricated fees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So. much. work.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, it looks like ol’ Cam is going to give it his best shot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stepping up to the legend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cam’s latest concoction is an “infrastructure upgrade fee”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is an infrastructure upgrade fee?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pfft, might as well ask a sexual predator how much forced intercourse is too much<\/em> intercourse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We love how the amount isn’t an even $200 or $250 but ends with a random integer – $4 – just to give it a whiff of legitimacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cam’s thought process in designing the fee<\/strong>: We need to make it seem legitimate so the amount should be oddly specific…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Merchant’s thought process after seeing the fee<\/strong>: Oh this must be real ‘cuz otherwise it would have just been $250<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Genius.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The average Heartland merchant is probably doing $500K of GPV. $254 = 5 bps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The average restaurant doing $500K of GPV should be paying no more than 40 bps in payments margin, so 5 bps is a solid 12.5% growth rate for… doing nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perfect, Cam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now here’s where this gets even more hilarious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This particular merchant is using a POS that’s not owned by Heartland but is instead partnered<\/em> with Heartland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This POS is undoubtedly contractually obligated to a revenue\/profit share with Heartland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, we’d bet dollars to donuts that this $254 fee conveniently<\/em> falls outside the scope of the agreement with Heartland, meaning Heartland gets to munch the whole fee as profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And this is why ISOs and partners hate payments companies: they directly abuse the “partner’s” customers and the partner has to deal with the fallout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keep at it, Cam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you work real hard you just might catch up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hard work to fill the shoes of the venerable Jeff Sloan. Jeff worked tirelessly to ensure a day didn’t go by that a Global Payments merchant wasn’t forking over their money on a make-believe fee. You simply cannot fathom the effort required to create such revenue schemes. You need a rat. A spinning wheel. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-solutions","category-merchants","post_format-post-format-image"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p81nA2-5mZ","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/reformingretail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/image.png?fit=1193%2C617&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20645"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21645,"href":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20645\/revisions\/21645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/reformingretail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/image.png?resize=770%2C399&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n