Plain-English breakdowns of fees, pricing models, and industry practices so you can make smarter decisions for your business.
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Heartland complaints all start the same way — a merchant who signed up years ago, trusted the Merchant Bill of Rights, and then opened a statement that didn’t look anything like what they were promised. Marcus runs a dental practice in Boca Raton. Two locations, about $85,000 a month in card volume. He signed with […]
Read Article →Fees & Interchange His Processor Knew. They Just Never Said Anything. The CEDP program and level 3 data are among the most valuable cost-reduction tools available to B2B merchants — and among the least talked about. Derek runs a commercial HVAC contracting company outside Nashville. Fifteen employees, mostly commercial work — office buildings, retail centers, […]
Read Article →Risk & Fraud Prevention Your Money Is in Your Account. You Just Can’t Have It Yet. A merchant account reserve is money your processor withholds from your deposits — legally, and often without warning. Fund holds can freeze thousands of dollars for 90 to 180 days with little explanation and no clear timeline for release. […]
Read Article →Payment Technology You’re Probably Paying a Fine Right Now for Something That Takes an Hour to Fix Most small merchants have a line item on their monthly processing statement they’ve never looked at closely. It’s labeled something like “PCI non-compliance fee” or “data security fee” or sometimes just “monthly compliance fee.” The amount varies by […]
Read Article →Risk & Fraud Prevention MATCH list payment processing is one of the few mechanisms in the merchant services industry that can end a business owner’s ability to accept credit cards for five years. The MATCH list is a shared blacklist maintained by Mastercard and consulted by every processor in the industry before approving a new […]
Read Article →Risk & Fraud Prevention The Difference A PayPal chargeback dispute is handled very differently than a traditional card network chargeback. Claire spent years working in back-office accounting at a payment processing company. Not on the sales floor, not in customer service — in the room where disputes actually get resolved. She saw the paperwork, the […]
Read Article →The Short Answer Yes — most HOAs can charge an HOA convenience fee on card payments, and most are leaving money on the table by not doing it. Every month, homeowners pay their dues. A significant portion of them pay by credit card. And every month, without a convenience fee program in place, your HOA […]
Read Article →The Question Do I need a merchant account? Most small business owners have been processing cards for years without ever thinking about it. They signed up for Square or Stripe in ten minutes, plugged in a reader, and started taking payments. It worked. So why would you need to know more? The answer is cost […]
Read Article →Risk & Fraud Prevention A Square account freeze can happen overnight — and when it does, your business stops accepting cards until Square decides otherwise. No warning. No timeline. No one on the phone who can actually help. This post covers why Square freezes accounts, what triggers a hold, how long it typically lasts, and […]
Read Article →Payment Technology The Payment Method That Skips the Card Networks Entirely A property management company I work with collects rent from about 140 units every month. For years, they were processing those payments by card — either through an online portal or by running cards manually over the phone. At an average rent of $1,800 […]
Read Article →A web developer I know called me last year. His client — a subscription software company doing about $35,000 a month — had just had their Stripe account terminated. No warning. No phone call. An email arrived on a Tuesday morning saying their account had been flagged for violating Stripe’s terms of service. The email […]
Read Article →Square payment processing problems don’t announce themselves. They show up after you’ve been on the platform long enough to stop questioning it. I sat across from a restaurant owner in Boca Raton last spring. She’d been running her place for six years. Solid lunch crowd, steady dinner service, about $28,000 a month running through her […]
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