Every merchant statement speaks its own dialect. This glossary translates the common line items into plain English — and tells you who sets each fee, because that decides whether it can be questioned at all. Fees the card brands publish (interchange, assessments, APF, NABU) are the same for every processor. Fees your processor sets are where audits find money.
Set by the card brands
The wholesale fee on every card transaction, paid to the bank that issued your customer's card. Visa and Mastercard publish the interchange tables; every processor pays the same ones. Not negotiable and not markup — but the pricing model you are on decides how much gets added on top of it.
Set by the card brands
Fees the card brands themselves charge to run their networks, usually a small percentage of volume plus a tiny per-item amount. Like interchange, they are published pass-through costs — the same for everyone.
Set by the card brands
A per-authorization fee Visa charges on card transactions (published at $0.0195 per authorization for most U.S. transactions). Small per swipe; very visible if you run thousands of small tickets.
Set by the card brands
Mastercard's per-item network fee (published at $0.0185 per item). Another genuine pass-through — it should appear once per transaction, at the published amount.
Set by the card brands
Extra brand fees when a card was issued in another country or a currency conversion happens. Legitimate when the customer mix explains it; worth a question when your customers are all local.
Depends on your pricing
The percentage piece of your processing cost. On flat-rate pricing this is the headline number (e.g. 2.6%); on interchange-plus it is the markup over interchange. Compare it only through your effective rate — never headline to headline.
Set by your processor
A monthly or annual fee for the processor's PCI compliance program — validating your SAQ, scanning, and reporting. This is a legitimate category of fee; a typical charge is roughly $10–$15/month. What deserves a question is an inflated amount, or the same compliance charged twice under two names.
Set by your processor
A monthly penalty-style fee billed when a merchant has not completed their required compliance steps (usually the annual SAQ questionnaire). Here is the catch worth auditing: it should stop once you are compliant. If you finished your SAQ and this fee kept billing, that is a misbilled fee — one of the most common audit findings.
Set by your processor
A small fee each time you close out (batch) a day's transactions — often a few dimes per batch. Set by your processor. It adds up for businesses that batch several times a day or run multiple terminals batching separately.
Set by your processor
A per-transaction fee for the Address Verification Service check on keyed and online sales — typically around a dime. Legitimate on card-not-present sales; questionable if it appears on ordinary in-person swipes.
Set by your processor
A monthly fee for producing your statement. Pure processor-set pricing — some processors charge it, many do not. It is never a card-brand fee, whatever the statement calls it.
Set by your processor
If your percentage fees for the month fall below a set floor, you are billed the difference. Common on interchange-plus accounts with low volume. Worth knowing your floor before a slow month surprises you.
Set by your processor
A fee when a cardholder's bank asks for documentation of a transaction (the step before a chargeback). Processor-set; a handful of retrievals a year is normal for most businesses.
Set by your processor
A flat fee per chargeback, set by your processor — commonly in the $15–$25 range. The fee applies win or lose, which is why prevention tooling matters more than dispute heroics.
Set by your processor
A per-call fee (around a dollar) when a transaction is authorized by phone instead of electronically. Rare in modern setups; a recurring line of these usually means a terminal or connection problem to fix.
Set by your processor
A monthly and/or per-transaction fee for an e-commerce payment gateway. Legitimate for online sellers — but check you are not paying for a gateway you no longer use, or paying it twice (once standalone, once inside a platform bundle).
Set by your processor
The vocabulary of tiered pricing: transactions that fail to meet the 'qualified' tier's conditions get surcharged into pricier tiers. The problem is opacity — most merchants cannot tell which sales landed where or why. This is the fee structure the interchange-plus comparison exists to explain.
Set by your processor
A percentage or flat charge with a official-sounding name that does not match any published card-brand fee. Sometimes it is a real cost being passed through under a house name; sometimes it duplicates the PCI program fee you already pay. Either way it is the first line to ask your processor to define — in writing.
Set by your processor
A once-a-year account fee some processors charge. Processor-set and negotiable at signing or renewal on many contracts — and a classic line to 'find' again on the statement the month after an increase notice.
Set by your processor
A fee for closing an account before the contract term ends, where your agreement has one. Amounts and waiver conditions live in the agreement you signed — anyone discussing your options should start by reading yours, not by quoting you a number.
Depends on your pricing
Not a fee — the measuring stick for all of them: total fees of every kind for a month ÷ total processed volume. It is the only honest way to compare processors, and the calculator computes yours from two numbers.
Brand fee figures are the brands' published amounts as of October 2026 and change on their schedules, not your processor's. Processor-set fees vary by contract — your statement and agreement are the authority on yours. Nothing here is legal or tax advice.
Run them through the Junk Fee Spotter, or start the free audit with just your email. A specialist works from your actual statement and explains every line in plain English — the report is yours to keep, there is no obligation to switch, and statements are arranged through a secure channel, never through this website.
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