Restructure Your Merchant Services Contract
Contract restructuring
The deal you signed is not the deal you are on.
Merchant processing agreements are written so the price can move after you sign. Rates drift, fees appear, the term renews itself, and the exit clause makes leaving expensive enough that most merchants stay and absorb it.
We restructure the agreement instead. Same provider if you want to keep them, a new one if you do not, with the onerous terms taken out and the pricing rebuilt from interchange up. Flat fee, and we keep 0% of what you save.
The problem
Nobody reads the merchant agreement, and it is written on that assumption
The application you signed was a few pages. The agreement it referred to was not, and it almost certainly lives on a website you were never sent. Inside it are the clauses that decide what happens to your pricing over the next five years, and none of them were discussed at the point of sale because none of them help sell the deal.
This is not a rogue-salesperson problem, it is how the industry is built. Credit card processing is an unregulated industry. There is no rate filing, no standard disclosure, and nothing that requires the price you were quoted to be the price you are still paying two years later.
So the rate creeps. A basis point here, a new monthly fee there, a category that quietly stops qualifying. Each move is small enough that nobody calls, and the agreement gives the processor the right to make it.
What is in there
The clauses that actually cost you money
1
Evergreen renewal
The term renews itself automatically unless you cancel inside a narrow window before the renewal date. Miss the window and you are locked in for another full term. Most merchants do not know the window exists, let alone when it falls.
2
Early termination and liquidated damages
The exit fee is the obvious one. The clause that does the real damage is liquidated damages, which can calculate your exit cost from projected future revenue rather than a fixed number. It is designed to make leaving unthinkable rather than merely expensive.
3
The equipment lease
Frequently a separate contract with a third-party leasing company, non-cancellable, and surviving the processing agreement entirely. Terminals worth a few hundred dollars have been leased for years at a multiple of their value. Cancelling the processing does not cancel this.
4
The right to change fees
Language allowing the processor to introduce or increase fees on notice, with notice frequently satisfied by a line on a statement nobody reads. This is the clause that turns a competitive quote into an uncompetitive account.
5
The pricing model itself
Tiered pricing, enhanced billback and similar structures are not simply expensive, they are opaque by design: they make it impossible to see what interchange actually cost and what the processor added. That opacity is the product.
6
Reserves and holdbacks
The right to hold a portion of your settlement, sometimes triggered by criteria you cannot see. For a business with real working capital needs, this clause matters more than the rate.
If you want the plain-language version of any term on your statement or in your agreement, our processing glossary defines them without the industry fog.
The usual advice, and why it is wrong
Switching processors is not the first move
The reflex when an account is overpriced is to go to market and switch. Sometimes that is right. Usually it is the most expensive way to solve the problem, for three reasons.
You pay to leave. Early termination, liquidated damages and a live equipment lease can wipe out a year of the savings before you start.
You pay to arrive. New terminals, gateway reintegration, staff retraining, and the operational risk of moving payments in a live business.
You sign the same agreement again. A new processor gives you a new quote inside the same contract structure, with the same renewal clause and the same right to reprice. Two years later you are having this conversation again with a different logo on the statement.
Restructuring attacks the pricing and the terms without moving the payments. Your existing processor generally prefers keeping a repriced account to losing it entirely, which is exactly the leverage that makes this work.
What we do
How a contract restructure runs
1
Read the statement first
Before anyone negotiates anything we work out what you are actually paying, line by line, against what the transaction should have cost. That is the processing audit, and it is the evidence everything after this depends on.
2
Find and read the actual agreement
Not the application. The full agreement, the program guide it incorporates by reference, the current fee schedule, and any equipment lease. This is frequently the first time a client has seen the complete set.
3
Establish what is negotiable
Interchange is not. Assessments are not. Everything above them is, and so is nearly every term in the contract. Knowing precisely where that line falls is what stops a negotiation turning into a discount on the wrong number.
4
Rebuild the pricing from interchange up
Transparent cost-plus pricing, with the processor margin stated as a number rather than buried in a tier. Once it is a number it can be compared, and once it can be compared it stops moving quietly.
5
Strip the onerous terms
Our attorneys work through the agreement to remove the clauses that lock you in: early termination fees, liquidated damages, evergreen renewal, and the deficiency and equipment charges that ride alongside them.
6
Keep watching it
Repriced accounts drift back. Monthly review is what keeps the new pricing in place, because the only thing that reliably stops fee creep is somebody checking every month.
Where a restructure genuinely is not the answer, we say so and help you move properly, with the exit costs quantified before you commit rather than discovered afterwards.
On the fee schedule
The charges we look for first
Interchange and assessments are network costs and they are the same for everyone. Everything else on the statement was decided by somebody, which means somebody can undecide it. These are the lines we go to first.
Monthly account, statement, customer service and minimum-processing fees, which are pure margin dressed as administration.
PCI compliance and PCI non-compliance fees, including the non-compliance charge that keeps billing long after the merchant became compliant.
Gateway, batch, authorization and network access fees charged on top of the transaction that already carried them.
Interchange padding, where the rate passed through to you is not the rate the network actually charged.
Downgrades caused by settings rather than by the sale, which are fixable at the terminal and are billed as though they are not.
Annual fees, regulatory fees and anything with a name that sounds official and does not correspond to a network cost.
We find and remove junk fees and optimize interchange, which is where the 40% or more reduction most of our clients see comes from. If you want to see the anatomy of a statement before you send us yours, the statement decoder walks through the lines one at a time.
What it costs
A flat fee, and we keep 0% of your savings
Every other firm doing this work charges a percentage of what it finds, typically for the next one to five years. Think about what that model rewards. It pays the auditor more when your costs stay high, it pays them nothing extra for removing a termination clause, and it means a share of the savings you were promised was never yours.
We charge a flat fee. Whatever the restructure saves you, you keep all of it, this year and every year after. There is no term, no exit fee, and nothing to cancel. What it costs is published here, before you speak to anyone.
The first audit is free. If we cannot find anything worth restructuring, you have lost nothing and you have a documented second opinion on your pricing, which is worth having on file the next time somebody calls promising to beat your rate.
Send us the statement and the contract
We will tell you what is negotiable, what the exit clauses actually say, and what the account should cost. No charge for the review.
Straight answers
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to leave my processor?
No, and usually you should not. Most restructures are done with the existing provider, because keeping a repriced account is better for them than losing it. If moving genuinely is the right answer we will tell you, with the exit costs quantified first.
Can early termination fees really be removed?
They are contract terms, and contract terms are negotiable. Our attorneys work to remove early termination, deficiency and equipment-related charges as part of the restructure. What is achievable depends on the agreement and the provider, which is why we read the agreement before promising anything.
What about my equipment lease?
It is normally a separate contract with a separate company, and it frequently survives everything else. It is one of the first things we look for, because a merchant who cancels their processing without dealing with the lease has not actually escaped anything.
How long does a restructure take?
The audit is quick. The negotiation depends on the provider and on how much of the agreement needs to change. We work to a defined scope so you know what is being asked for before it is asked.
What if my pricing is already fair?
Then we say so. It happens, and a documented second opinion is a useful thing to have. The clauses are worth reviewing anyway, because fair pricing inside an evergreen agreement with liquidated damages is still an account you cannot leave.
What does it cost?
A flat fee, published in advance, and we keep 0% of your savings. The first audit is free.
Want to talk?
- Call us today 800-672-1292
- Book a free consultation
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