How Businesses can Save Some Money on Merchant Services Fees

Merchant Services Fees

Every large-size merchant, PSP or MSP needs to review its merchant services arrangement from time to time. Some new arrangement can allow a business to save some money on merchant services fees.

For example, a payment service provider can optimize its transaction routing strategy. Amex card transactions can be routed directly to the association for processing, while debit cards can be processed by PIN-less debit networks.

Another approach, which can be utilized by a PSP to reduce merchant serviced fees, requires the PSP to stop delegating merchant underwriting and merchant funding functions to the current processor. Basically, the processor can be left (and paid for) its main task, i.e. transaction processing, while underwriting and merchant funding can be handled by a PSP.

As for merchants, they can try to “cut” as many intermediary links from the “food chain”, which lies between the cardholder and the issuer, as possible. The smaller number of intermediaries is involved, the less the merchant services fees are (because every middleman, naturally, strives to get his share of the fees).

Still another approach is to try to save money on gateway fees by switching to subscription-based pricing model from per-transaction pricing of payment gateway services. Respective arrangements can be negotiated with the current or new payment gateway provider.

More information on the ways of saving money on merchant services fees can be found in the respective article on #Paylosophy blog.