I was curious the other day and wondered what kind of merchant accounts fees a big corporation pays. I called a friend who underwrites them and asked what kind of rate would a company get that’s doing $500,000 a month. I really wanted to find out where the floor was, and he said it would be  8 basis points over cost and seven cents a transaction for a high volume merchant.

Different card networks charge different rates, but that’s an effective rate of %1.2 to %1.3 which is probably what a place like Walmart or McDonald’s gets. A small business should be no higher than %1.5 percent for retail and %1.95 percent for Internet purchases, and 8 cents per transaction. Of course, if you look around, most places charge a lot more than that because many agents are in a money grab for residual commissions.

Some of the fees they charge are also negotiable if you find a merchant account underwriter, and not just some employee who isn’t authorized to make deals. I hope you learned a little about just how much bargaining power a high volume company has (with merchant banking practically everything is negotiable, don’t let some rep stonewall you in negotiating fees).

Give MST a call at 800-715-8053 if you’d like to find out what the real bottom rate is for your business.  The company you process with is important, but if it’s not with an underwriter and they’re greedy, you’ll never get the lowest rate in a merchant account.