Merchants continue to spend 0 time studying who gets what when it comes to the cost of merchant credit card processing, so they are prone to salesaman walking through the door. The lion's share goes to Visa and Mastercard et al. The biggest way a merchant can get costs down is to a. make sure they are on interchange 'plus' pricing, where all the costs are passed on and then marked up by the 'plus' part, typically .0050 0r 50 basis points, or 1/2 of one percent. b. obtain a per authorization charge of 10 cents per or less If you find out you are on a 'tiered' pricing plan, which is like 3 rates, and certainly seems the most logical, reject it and push for interchange pricing. Why? Imagine a railroad track between 2 busy cities with a lot of commerce. The railroad then decides to cut the line and build a new extension out of the way to reach the other city, so it can charge more. This is what happens when you are ona tiered pricing plan. I like railroads so use them as an analogy.