Merchant Service Lingo

When you are reading your processing statement, it is important to understand the lingo…so you know exactly what you are getting charged for each time!  We are here to give you a little insight and breaking down the terms so that you can read and interpret your statement with ease.

POS

POS is simply an acronym for point-of-sale – the place where customers make their payments.  With credit card processing it refers to where the credit card is swiped.  This can include mobile, wireless and virtual terminals.

Card Not Present (CNP)

This refers to when a credit card is manually inputted because either the cardholder or the credit card is not present during the transaction.

Batch Fee

These fees are charged each time money gets deposited into your bank account.  The batch is a sum of all the earnings during a given period of time – most commonly each day.

Transaction Fee

This fee is charged every time that a payment is processed.  These are usually anywhere between $.05 - $.30.

Average Ticket-size

This refers to the average dollar amount of each credit card transactions. 

In order to get your average ticket-size, you simply take a monthly processing volume by the number of transactions to arrive at the average ticket size.

Monthly Processing Volume

This is the sum of the monthly credit/debit card sales (in dollars) that a merchant processes.

Qualified vs. Non-qualified

This classification that a processor decides what qualifies for the lower rate and what does not for the lower rate and what doesn’t.   With this classification so many different things apply – business cards, swiped vs. keyed or AVS verification.

Basis Points

This s the percentage a merchant is charged on a credit card transaction.  One basis point is equal to 1/100^th of 1% (i.e. 25 basis points = .25%).

It is important that you are confident and knowledgeable about your merchant services.  It is essential that you are able to read and understand your statements.  Apex Payment Solutions is here to answer any and all questions you may have about credit card processing.  Contact us today so that we can help make all of your credit card processing as simple as can be for you!