Plain-English breakdowns of fees, pricing models, and industry practices so you can make smarter decisions for your business.
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A November Statement for Zero Sales A Seasonal Merchant Account Kept Billing Denise After She Closed for Winter A seasonal merchant account was the last thing Denise Pelletier expected to be paying for in November. Pelletier’s Garden Center, her nursery just outside Montpelier, Vermont, is open April through October — seven good months of bedding […]
Read Article →Authorized by Your City When a Payment Goes Wrong, Residents Call the City A resident sets up autopay for the water bill, trusts it, and months later learns nothing was paid — the charge silently failed and late penalties have stacked up. Or a system change pulls the wrong amount and overdraws their account. The […]
Read Article →The Fee on Top When Taxpayers Hit a Problem, They Call the County A resident sits down to pay a property tax bill online, picks the card option on the county’s site, and at the last screen a service charge appears on top of what they owe. The charge does not go to the county […]
Read Article →Shopping the Switch What You’re Actually Shopping For When You Look at AllPaid Alternatives Most agencies start looking for a way out for one reason: a resident complained about the fee. Pay a court fine, a probation cost, or a bail amount through the county page and a service charge of roughly 4 to 5% […]
Read Article →The Fee at Checkout The “Flat” Fee That Wasn’t Most PayGov complaints start in the same place: the final screen of a utility payment, where a “convenience fee” lands on top of a water or electric bill and turns out larger than the round number people expected. PayGov.US is the third-party processor behind thousands of […]
Read Article →The Hidden Convenience Fee The Fee You Don’t See Until Checkout The AllPaid complaints follow a pattern. Pay a traffic ticket, a court fine, or a bail amount online and a service charge — usually around 4% — lands on top of the total at the final screen, paid by the person clearing the fine, […]
Read Article →High-Risk Reality The Account Worked Fine: Until 1 a.m. When Rudy Salazar started taking cards at his Houston bond agency, nobody warned him that a bail bonds merchant account is a different animal — until the morning his processor froze every dollar he had. He had run the place for nine years, two blocks from […]
Read Article →Merchant Tips Most boards meet delinquent HOA dues the same way: a few owners drift a month behind, the treasurer sends a sterner email, and eventually someone says the word “lawyer.” By then the cheap options are already gone. The truth that runs against instinct is that the least expensive tool for handling delinquent HOA […]
Read Article →Human Nature Renata Salas had been treasurer of her 150-home Palm Beach County association for nine months when the board approved an $1.8 million HOA special assessment to repave the private roads and replace the clubhouse roof — about $12,000 per home, due in sixty days. The vote was the easy part. The morning the […]
Read Article →Digital Wallet Acceptance What It Actually Takes to Accept Apple Pay and Google Pay To accept digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay, most merchants need far less than they expect — and they pay nothing extra to do it. A mobile wallet is not a separate payment network you have to sign up […]
Read Article →Card Network Rules Yes: But Only Up to $10, and Only on Credit Merchants can set card minimums, but the rule is narrower than the handwritten signs taped to most counters suggest. Under the Durbin Amendment — part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act — you may require a minimum purchase before a customer pays by […]
Read Article →VISA VAMP · THE NEW CHARGEBACK RULES 2.2% 1.5% −32% Visa’s “excessive” fraud + dispute threshold Effective April 1, 2026 · US, Canada, EU, APAC FRAUD (TC40) + DISPUTES (TC15) → ONE COMBINED RATIO Legal & Compliance You Didn’t Change Anything. The Line Moved. A merchant who ran a clean book in March can be […]
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