Credit Card Processing: Avoiding annual fees
Credit card processors are notorious at charging annual fees without explanation or little awareness. If you are a customer that is seeking help with understanding annual fees, and want help in making sure you aren’t charged one, stick around and you’ll read more about this in our blog posting provided by Centurion Payment Services. Annual fees are profit makers for merchant processing companies, and are avoidable if you can talk with the decision maker in regards to what you want versus what you are going to to get on your merchant credit card processing account. Annual fees typically have various names, forms, sizes, and reasons. Mostly, you’ll notice if you are in the industry of processing credit cards, the annual fee is a profit center for lost profit throughout the year on any particular merchant account.
Avoiding annual fees
Typically small merchant’s who cannot afford this fee, are charged it annually, and not told about it; usually because the merchant processor plans on charging the credit card processing merchant in December’s; typically when a sales representative is no longer with the company anymore. Many questions may arise due to processing credit cards and the annual fees, so in this blog posting; we’re going to cover these questions, and try to narrow down an answer for you to understand what can be done and what questions you should be aware of and ask.
Why are processors charging this fee, and what can be done? Processors charge this fee as a way to profit for any lost revenue throughout the year. Typically a merchant services provider will say they are using this fee to cover additional expenses. In reality, the annual fee that you are charged on a credit card processing account is arbitrary and again, used as a profit center for the merchant account.
How to avoid this fee in the future? Annual fees can be avoided if you make sure you are dealing with the right person at the merchant services company. The reason its critical to make sure you are speaking with the highest power who has a relationship with the Independent Sales Organization is because you need to ensure that you are 100% confident that you will not receive a fee from any merchant services provider and or its affiliates (ISO) stations. These fees are very dangerous to the customer, and we need to ensure that they are 100% avoided if you truly want to get a good rate for your merchant account. We firmly believe at CPS; annual fees should be avoided, and thus we do our best to make sure you are avoiding them at all costs.
Avoiding annual fees
How can I ensure I won’t be charged an annual fee in the future after my first year processing? Get the agreement that there is no annual fee in writing. Do not let a merchant services rep give you a “word of mouth” I won’t charge the fee. This is a typical “unethical sales practice” which results in an annual fee being charged, and this is the purpose of our blog, to avoid the annual fee at all costs. Other tips on processing credit cards and annual fees include: Making sure you are not locked into a contract. Making sure that your annual fee is not charged monthly. Making sure you are not signing an annual fee agreement *AKA* fee in the rate-plan of fees set up by the merchant service rep.
