{"id":33877,"date":"2026-07-14T05:39:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T10:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/?p=33877"},"modified":"2026-07-14T05:39:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T10:39:23","slug":"shift4-fees-surpass-97-cagr-but-are-still-undercounted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/14\/shift4-fees-surpass-97-cagr-but-are-still-undercounted\/","title":{"rendered":"Shift4 Fees Surpass 97% CAGR But Are Still Undercounted"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nothing screams your business is dying l<\/em>ouder than massive fee increases at every opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Particularly when you\u2019re perfectly hedged to inflation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Granted, Stripe, modern processor who’s still growing 30% annually, charges an outrageous amount of money for basic features (how about an additional 100 bps for recurring payments, anyone?), but they’re not cramming fees on their customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want a masterclass is how to screw your customers, Shift4 breaks the mold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, we love that Shift4\u2019s fees are paid all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not once a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just whenever Shift4 feels like they need to juice earnings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Merchants were eager to share just how much the Shift4 thievery increases at every opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We also love how Shift4 bills per TID (terminal) and not per MID.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is good ol\u2019 throwback payments abuse where you can just multiply fees aggressively. We know a ton of merchants who get pummeled with this accounting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Merchants will usually have multiple terminals, which multiplies the financial damage from fees many times over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shift4 went from made up Regulatory Compliance Fee to Regulatory Assurance Fee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we get to May 2024. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guess what? Time for a new fee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Now we get an Annual Fee, again charged per TID because if you\u2019re going to add a fake fee better really get the most mileage you can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

October comes again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Better increase that fee from last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

$129.99 -> $189.99 is a 46.16% increase.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyone want to guess what inflation was for 2024?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyone?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was 2.9%.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forget that the merchant probably raised their prices 2.9% to combat inflation, making Shift4\u2019s take home perfectly indexed to that increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparently not enough when you\u2019ve got rockets to fly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New year, new changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And all of them bad with Shift4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This message was delayed and released in June this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We guess the guy responsible for cooking up the May nonsense was busy thinking about his space voyage and lost track of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whoops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Now we\u2019re really cooking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Annual Fee that we first saw 12 months ago was $99 up to a maximum of 2 TIDs per MID.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh yea?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well how about we issue a 1100% increase, you piece of shit merchant?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ll increase the fee itself 152.53% from $99 to $250.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s make sure we can apply to even more<\/em> terminals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why stop at 2 when we can go to 4?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Best case for merchants is now a measly 152.53% increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worst case is a 305% increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a very reasonable 113x the 2025 US rate of inflation. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we can\u2019t be done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Need to increase fees at least twice a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Our Regulatory Whatever I Want to Call It Fee<\/em> is now $325, up from 189.99, or a tame 71.06% CAGR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we again expanded the number of devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of a banal 2 TIDs per MID, we\u2019re now going to apply it to, we don\u2019t know, 3 TIDs per MID.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can we do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh yea, our contracts strip all our customers of any vestige of protection, so why not?!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a nice 106.59% price increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And by the way, it\u2019s not like Shift4 is cramming margin into just these few fees – look at this shit:
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Lord knows how many other fees these poor merchants are suffering under.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we get to the fee that became popular on the internet: the $2,000 aggregation of Who Cares and So What fees?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hard to say how much of a price increase this is since it depends on how many terminals a Shift4 merchant had, but let\u2019s just plot the CAGR of Shaft4\u2019s fees from 2023 assuming a merchant had 2 terminals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Look at this beauty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The CAGR on JUST THESE FEES has been 97.41% since 2023.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have any idea how insane that is?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best performing hedge fund of all time returns a paltry 66% by comparison<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Top decile investors start returns at 20% IRR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shift4 blows all these numbers away, and who knows how many other fees or deceptive tactics we\u2019re missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Padded interchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not refunding interchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s Friday fee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shift4\u2019s CAGR might actually be substantially higher than this already-unfathomable number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it\u2019s not even winter yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If history tells us anything, we bet Shift4 issues another fee before the year closes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not to mention rumors of Shift4 toiling fastidiously to eliminate required notifications for fee increases altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How low is the bar that merchants are actually signing with this company?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No comment from Shaft4: they’re too busy counting money to bother replying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nothing screams your business is dying louder than massive fee increases at every opportunity. Particularly when you\u2019re perfectly hedged to inflation. Granted, Stripe, modern processor who’s still growing 30% annually, charges an outrageous amount of money for basic features (how about an additional 100 bps for recurring payments, anyone?), but they’re not cramming fees on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33883,"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":[5,4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-solutions","category-merchants","category-pos","post_format-post-format-image"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p81nA2-8Op","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/reformingretail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-5.png?fit=1600%2C1200&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33877","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=33877"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33928,"href":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33877\/revisions\/33928"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}