Credit Card Processing Audit

Stop overpaying your credit card processor. Find out exactly what you’re being charged for free.

Most businesses lose thousands of dollars a year to inflated interchange rates, junk fees, and padded processor margins buried in statements that were never designed to be read. Our comprehensive 10-point merchant processing audit uncovers every one of those charges, line by line, and shows you precisely where your money is going and how to get it back.

The initial audit is free, there’s no obligation, and in most cases we identify savings of up to 40% or more without asking you to switch banks or disrupt a single transaction.

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weAudit Benefits

The First Audit is FREE

We Find & Remove Credit Card Processing Junk Fees and Optimize Interchange, Reducing Your Merchant Processing Costs by 40% or More!

We’ll get your Interchange Rebates back

We Find & Remove Credit Card Processing Junk Fees and Optimize Interchange, Reducing Your Merchant Processing Costs by 40% or More!

We find and remove all HIDDEN fees

We Find & Remove Credit Card Processing Junk Fees and Optimize Interchange, Reducing Your Merchant Processing Costs by 40% or More!

frustrated woman trying to figure out her credit card processing fees

The problem: your processing statement is designed to confuse you

Credit card processing is one of the largest recurring expenses a business carries, and one of the least understood. Statements routinely run dozens of pages, blend hundreds of interchange categories, and use inconsistent labels for the same fee. Processors count on that complexity. It’s how a “low rate” quoted at signup quietly becomes an effective rate that’s twice as high a year later.

Common charges that drain your bottom line include downgraded interchange from mis-qualified transactions, non-qualified surcharges, monthly minimums, PCI non-compliance fees, statement and batch fees, and “network access” or “regulatory” line items that are really just margin by another name. Individually they look small. Added up across every transaction, every month, they’re one of the most overlooked profit leaks in your business.

You shouldn’t have to become a payments expert to stop overpaying. That’s what we’re for.

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A credit card processing auditor reviewing card processing statements

Our Proprietary 10 Point Audit

Correct Setup

Confirming that the correct MCC code and interchange flags are being used, and that the correct acquiring systems are in place.

Processor markup

Separating the true cost of processing from the margin your provider adds on top, so you can see what you’re actually paying them.
Hidden and miscategorized fees

Identifying junk fees, vague “regulatory” or “network” charges, and line items that don’t belong on your statement.
PCI compliance status

Checking whether you’re compliant, being charged non-compliance penalties, or paying for coverage you don’t need.
Monthly minimums and flat fees

Flagging statement fees, batch fees, and minimums that erode your margin regardless of volume.
Equipment and gateway costs

Reviewing terminal leases, gateway charges, and software fees for overpayment or redundancy.
Chargeback and dispute handling

Assessing chargeback fees and whether your processing setup is exposing you to avoidable ones.
Rate history

Comparing what you were originally quoted against what you’re paying now to expose rate creep.
Interchange rebate recovery

When you refund or return a sale, the interchange you originally paid on that transaction is supposed to come back to you. Many processors quietly keep those rebates to pad their profits.

Interchange Optimization™

Interchange is about 90% of credit card processing cost. It changes twice a year, and many things impact it and how a transaction settles. Getting it right can take a transaction from 3.25% down to 1.95%. We are experts in all aspects of credit card interchange fees and rules.

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Credit card processing auditor checking their work

Results — what an audit typically uncovers

Our audits routinely surface things merchants never knew they were paying for: made-up and junk fees, inflated fees, inflated interchange, inflated discount rates, wrong MCC codes, incorrect interchange flags, hidden interchange baked into “simple” pricing, bundled rates that obscure the true cost, and flat rates quietly costing a merchant 60 basis points or more over what they should pay.

One especially common, and expensive, problem: B2B merchants set up on B2C gateways that can’t pass the data needed to qualify for lower business-card interchange. Or, some need a Data Enhanced Gateway and are on a B2B or even a B2C Gateway.

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Case Studies

B2B / wholesale

They had been placed on a B2C gateway that couldn’t pass Level 2 and Level 3 data, and its transactions carried the wrong MCC and interchange flags, so nearly everything downgraded. Re-platforming to a proper B2B setup and correcting the coding reduced their effective rate from 3.1% to 2.2%, saving over $360,000 per a year.

a merchant looking at his credit card processing fees on his laptop

A B2B services company

They had chosen one of the out-of-the-box, plug-and-play recommended providers to keep things simple for their IT team. The trade-off was a statement that was easy to read but told them almost nothing. The first thing we did was request an itemized statement. Once we had it, the picture was clear: they were being charged a discount rate of over 70 basis points, more than half of their transactions were downgrading because they’d been set up on the wrong type of payment gateway, and the provider was inflating their interchange on top of it. After we corrected everything, their effective rate dropped from 4% to 2.3% — a savings of over $360,000 a year.

E-commerce – An online seller

An online seller processing $20 million annually accepted a high volume of business and purchasing cards, and they knew they needed to pass Level II and Level III data, so they’d chosen one of the most popular Level III gateways. The problem was in how it was being used: to keep checkout easy for their customers, they were only capturing the basic information, so those transactions never qualified for the lower Level II and III interchange. On top of that, they were carrying a high discount rate, high transaction fees, and a statement riddled with small junk fees baked into the pricing. One of their biggest wins came from recovering their interchange rebates. All told, we dropped their effective rate from 3.5% to 2.1%, saving them approximately $280,000 a year.

merchant being told to use the endorsed credit card processor

Endorsed processor

A business had signed with the recommended and endorsed processor by their industry association, assuming an “endorsed” or “preferred” provider automatically meant vetted, pre-negotiated, competitive pricing. It didn’t. Endorsement deals are marketing arrangements often with a cut flowing back to the association and this one hid an inflated discount rate, padded transaction fees, and a stack of junk fees baked into the statement. Because the processor came recommended, no one had ever thought to question it. Our audit unwound the markup and recovered the overcharges, dropping their effective rate from 3.4 and saving them approximately $165.000 per year.

Frequently asked questions

How much does the audit cost?

The initial audit is free. We review your statement and deliver a findings report at no cost and with no obligation. You only move forward if the savings make sense for you.

How much could I actually save?

It varies by business, volume, and current setup, but savings of up to 40% or more are common. Because interchange makes up 80–90% of processing costs, businesses that have never been audited tend to have the most to recover.

Do I have to switch processors or banks?

Usually not. In most cases, we optimize and recover within your existing setup. If switching would clearly serve you better, we’ll tell you, but it’s rarely required to capture meaningful savings.

What do you need from me to get started?

Just one recent monthly processing statement. That’s enough for us to begin the 10-point audit.

How long does the audit take?

Most findings reports are turned around in about 5 days depending on the how many audits are in the queue in front of you. Easy PCI™ certification typically takes about an hour.

Is there any risk or catch?

No. The audit is free, there’s no obligation, and if we don’t find savings, you’re under no pressure to do anything. The only thing you risk is continuing to overpay by not looking.

What is interchange, and why does it matter so much?

Interchange is the fee set by the card networks and paid to the card-issuing bank on every transaction. It accounts for 80–90% of your total processing costs, which is exactly why ensuring each transaction qualifies for the lowest applicable interchange rate is where the largest, most durable savings come from.

How is this different from what my current processor tells me?

Your processor profits from the margin built into your statement, so they have little incentive to point out where you’re overpaying. We work independently on your behalf, with no stake in keeping any fee in place.

What kinds of businesses benefit most?

Any business accepting cards can benefit, but the biggest recoveries tend to come from B2B and higher-volume operations that haven’t been independently audited before – B2B and wholesale distributors, professional services firms, e-commerce sellers, and multi-location businesses especially. B2B in particular often leaves the most on the table, because Level 2 and Level 3 interchange qualification is easy to miss and expensive to overlook.

What happens after the audit?

If you choose to move forward, we recover eligible rebates, correct misqualified transactions, optimize your interchange, and with monthly audits keep watch so the savings hold over time. But, no worries everything is month to month. With a 100% love the results or don’t pay guarantee.

Make sure to check out our competition

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Our Services

We do far more than audit credit card statements.

Monthly Audits

It is critical to continue to have your merchant processing statements audited each month to ensure all processing fees align and are consistent with the fees defined in your restructured agreement. And here’s the reason why it is critical:

Every merchant agreement includes a clause, “We may also increase our fees or add new fees for Services for any reason at any time.” When a rate hike occurs, you may or may not receive a notice that states, “Continuing your merchant account with us or use of your merchant account after 30 days will constitute your acceptance to these terms.”

When your credit card processor takes one penny too much, we will catch it and get it back.

Our 10-point comprehensive merchant processing audit is unmatched in the industry delivering the largest savings – GUARANTEED!

Credit card processors make PCI incredibly difficult and charge high non-compliance fees, putting merchants at risk of severe penalties while increasing their own profits.

We hold our clients’ hands and guide them through the many complexities, making PCI easy! Over 90% of our clients achieve PCI certification in less than one hour, freeing up their resources, allowing them to focus on their work.

Interchange makes up 80 – 90% of a merchant’s overall processing cost. For merchants looking to reduce their processing costs, executing transactions to settle at the lowest interchange rate is imperative.

Interchange is the most complex component of merchant processing, and they change hundreds of categories every year, exacerbating the situation.

It is no wonder we find interchange savings on 99% of all the audits we perform.

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