What you really pay to take cards.

Start with your real rate

Forget the line items for a minute. The one number that matters is your real rate: every fee you paid, divided by your card sales. If you paid $3,200 in fees on $80,000 in card sales, your real rate is 4%. It does not matter what rate you were quoted. This is what leaves your account, and for most shops it is higher than the number they think they signed up for.

Quick math: on your monthly bill, find "total fees" and "total volume" (some bills say "total card sales"). Divide the first by the second. That is your real rate.

The fees to look for

• Card security fee. Often $10 to $40 a month, sometimes with a second fee for not filling out a yearly form.
• Billing fee. A charge for sending you the bill. Yes, really.
• Batch fee. Charged every time you close out, often every day.
• Non-qualified or downgrade fees. A sale that does not meet vague rules gets bumped to a higher rate.
• Monthly minimum. If your fees come in too low, they charge you the difference.
• Gateway, technology or service fees. Catch-all lines that are easy to pad.
• Annual fee. Once a year, easy to miss.

Watch for tiered pricing

If your bill sorts sales into "qualified," "mid-qualified" and "non-qualified," you are on tiered pricing. The card company decides which bucket each sale lands in, and the downgrades add up. Cost-plus pricing shows the wholesale cost and the markup as two separate lines. It is clearer, and it is easier to compare.

The part nobody can waive

Some of the cost is set by Visa, Mastercard and the banks. Every card company pays it, so nobody can waive it. What a card company controls is its own markup and the extra fees on top. If someone says they can make the card networks' cost disappear, be careful.

What we do with your number

We do not beat your rate. We match it. Whatever you pay today becomes your rate with us, so there is nothing to argue about. Then, every month, we send you 20% of our cut. The more you run on cards, the bigger it gets. The program costs $24.99 a month, and you still pay the card fee on refunds.

That is the whole deal. Bring one month's bill to the call and we will work out your real rate with you, in writing, before you sign anything.