In continuation from our last post, let’s take a look at more of the industry standard fees that one should know.

Statement Fee: Statement fees are usually payable every month for as long as you request a monthly statement to be mailed to your doorstep. We would suggest you to “go green” and opt for the electronic version. This way, your statement will be made available online for you to download – a pretty nifty feature especially if you plan to upload it to your accounting program for taxation purposes. Your accountant will love you for it!

Hidden Fees/Junk Fees: Security fee, audit fee and excessive transactions fees. Sounds dodgy, don’t they? These are what we classify under the category of junk fees – fees that should raise warning bells and prompt you to go shopping for a new provider.

As for hidden fees, these are a dime a dozen when it comes to dealing with less-than-honest merchant account providers who saw no wrong in not mentioning them to you in the first place. Granted, a new merchant may not know what sort of fees to look out for, but if a provider is truly sincere in offering you quality services, he should mention all the fees upfront and not hide them from your knowledge.

One hidden fee that you should look out for is the teaser rate that is offered – not unlike a carrot dangled in front of a hungry beast. This teaser rate is almost always ridiculously low – so low that you’ll be tempted to say ‘yes’ and sign on to that merchant account provider on the spot. If and when you do, you will quickly discover that this is just a temporary rate and does not last long. Another tactic employed by dishonest providers is the old bait and switch. They tempt you with teaser rates applicable to one particular card type in a particular category, but charge exorbitantly for the rest of the cards in other categories! In the end you will end up paying more than you realize.

Application Fee: An application fee is paid to facilitate your merchant account application. Providers who say that they will waive this may not be entirely truthful. IF they indeed waive this fee, then count yourself lucky, if not you may be overcharged elsewhere. However, if you have reasonably good credit history, your chances of having the application fee waived is high.

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