A weAudit Briefing
5 things your processor does NOT want you to know.
Read these once. Then look at your last statement. You will see the merchant processing industry differently.
$100B — $200B
Estimated annual overbilling of U.S. businesses by credit card processors.
No. 01
It is an unregulated industry.
Merchant processing is unregulated, and to make matters worse, the networks change over 200 rules and categories each year, typically in April and October. Tracking it is impossible by design.
This makes it easy for processors to inflate fees, invent new ones, keep your rebates, and a lot more. We constantly update our proprietary software to catch the changes. It is like chasing a moving target.
No. 02
You are not locked in.
Processors love to tell you that you have to use a specific processor or gateway because of your ERP or tech stack. Sometimes that is true. 90 percent of the time it is not.
You either have options they are hiding, or simple middleware can give you full freedom to choose a better, more transparent solution. Why would they not tell you? Because they are making a fortune off your current setup.
No. 03
They force the downgrades.
Downgrades are not random. Processors can cause them by misconfiguring your account on purpose. Wrong setup. Wrong gateway. Wrong interchange flags.
Why? When your transactions downgrade, they make more money. Higher fees, bigger margins, fatter commissions. The worse you do, the better they do.
No. 04
They can raise fees whenever they want.
Straight from a typical processing agreement:
“We may also increase our fees or add new fees for Services for any reason at any time.”
Section 26.5, typical processor agreement
Some agreements say they will notify you. Not all do. And when they do notify you, it is buried in fine print under vague names that sound official but are completely made up:
Fees that sound like Visa or Mastercard but are not
Interchange Clearing Fee not from Visa
Network Access Fee not from Mastercard
MC License & Registration not from Mastercard
Processors pitch you on a low Discount Rate, then sneak in the increases through hidden charges that look like network passthroughs.
No. 05
Silent consent.
Even when they raise rates, they count on you not noticing. Here is the kind of language they bury in a long block of legal text:
“Based upon recent card organization changes as well as our own pricing considerations, your discount rates will increase by 0.10 percent. Continuing your merchant account with us or use of your merchant account after 30 days will constitute your acceptance to these terms.“
Actual fee-increase notice, October 2024
Translation. They lead with vague phrases like “card organization changes” to justify hikes. The truth: Visa and Mastercard pricing has barely changed in 15 years. Network categories get reshuffled, not raised. It is a smokescreen so the processor can quietly raise their own fees.
They will say the increase is “just 0.10 percent, only 10 cents per $100.” If you were paying 0.05 percent before, they just tripled your fee.
And you only have 30 days to object. Miss the window and your silence becomes consent.
There is a lot more they do not want you to know. Catching what processors hide takes experience, not guesswork.
Want to know if you are being overbilled?
Two ways to find out.
No strings. No credit card. Nothing to sign. Whichever is easier for you.
Prefer to read first? Get the free guide to the fees your processor does not explain.
P.S. We do not take a percentage of your savings. The processor already took too much. We are here to fix it, not profit from it.