How to read a processing statement

Interchange, assessments, and markup -- and how to check them against the calculator.

A real processing statement is more intimidating than either pricing structure described in flat rate vs. interchange-plus. This is a walkthrough of what's actually on it, and how to check it against this site's calculator.

The three things you're actually paying for

• Interchange. Set by the card networks and paid to the customer's card-issuing bank. It isn't one rate — it varies by card type (debit, standard credit, rewards or premium credit), and by how the card was accepted (in person vs. typed in online). Neither you nor your processor sets this; it's published in schedules the networks update a few times a year.
• Assessments. A separate, usually smaller fee paid to the card networks themselves (Visa, Mastercard, and so on), distinct from interchange. Some statements list it as its own line; others fold it into a combined "network fees" figure.
• Markup. The processor's own margin. On an interchange-plus statement this is a separate, explicit line — a percentage and often a small per-transaction fee. On a flat-rate plan there's no separate markup line at all, because it's already baked into the single quoted rate.

Checking a real statement against the calculator

The calculator estimates cost from a representative blended interchange rate for your card mix, not the exact rate for every card that walked through the door that month — real statements will vary transaction to transaction in a way a simple calculator can't reproduce exactly. Even so, it's a useful sanity check:

1. Find your total card volume and total number of transactions for a month on the statement (or a recent monthly summary).
2. Divide volume by transaction count to get your average ticket.
3. Find the total fees charged for that month, and divide by volume to get your actual effective rate.
4. Enter your volume, average ticket, and the rate and per-transaction terms from your contract into the calculator, and compare its effective rate to the one you calculated in step 3.

If the two are close, the statement is charging roughly what your contract says it should. If there's a persistent gap, it's worth asking the processor to explain it directly — it may be a card mix skewed more toward expensive categories than the calculator's representative average, or it may be one of the fees below.

What this calculator doesn't cover

A statement can carry charges that aren't part of the per-transaction rate at all, so no rate calculator — this one included — captures them: monthly minimum fees, PCI-compliance fees, statement or batch fees, gateway fees, chargeback fees, and early-termination fees. None of these scale with volume the way interchange, assessments, and markup do, so they have to be checked on the statement itself, not estimated here.