Interactive exercise
Merchant Statement Example: Find the $80,785 in Overbillings
Below is a real five page merchant processing statement, with the business name removed. The merchant who received it was told they were paying $357.93 a month to accept credit cards. They were actually being overbilled $80,785.60 a year.
Read it the way an auditor would. Click any charge you would challenge, whether that is a fee line, a rate, or a number in the Processing Activity Summary. When you are finished, hit Reveal and Score to see how much of the padding you caught. If a line item is unfamiliar, the glossary and the statement decoder explain what each one is supposed to mean.
Where the $80,785 was hiding
The padding on this statement was not one large charge. It was spread across three places, none of which change the number the merchant looked at each month.
Invented fee lines
Charges with official sounding names that no card brand or bank actually levies. They sit alongside real pass through fees, so they look like part of the cost of doing business.
Marked up rates
Interchange is set by Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express, and every processor pays the same. What sits on top of it is negotiable, and on this statement it had been quietly widened.
The activity summary
Most merchants never read past page one. The Processing Activity Summary is where transactions get sorted into more expensive categories than they belong in.
Why the monthly total still looked reasonable
The line labelled Processing Fees on this statement read $357.93. That is the number the merchant checked, and it never moved much. The overbilling was not in that line. It was in the pass through charges below it, which most business owners assume are fixed costs handed down from the card brands.
Some of them are. Interchange and network assessments are real, and you can read what each one is meant to cover in the statement decoder. The rest are set by the processor, and a fee that sounds official is not the same as a fee that exists. We keep a running list of the ones that do not, in junk fees.
Common questions
Is this a real statement?
Yes. It is an actual merchant statement with the business name and account numbers removed. The fees, rates and volumes are unchanged.
How would I check my own statement?
Start with the fee lines you cannot explain, then compare your effective rate against your interchange. Our statement decoder works through the common line items one at a time, and the glossary covers the vocabulary.
How common is overbilling at this scale?
More common than most owners expect. We publish what we find, including the settlements the industry would rather you did not read, in overbillings.
What does an audit cost?
We charge a flat fee rather than a share of your savings, which is unusual in this industry. The reasoning, and the comparison against how everyone else prices, is on our audit cost page.
Want this done to your own statement?
Send us your last statement and we will tell you what is real, what is padding, and what it is costing you a year.
See how the audit works