Lower Your Payment Processing Fees — or Get Them to Zero

U.S. merchants paid a record ~$185 billion in card processing fees in 2025. For small and mid-sized restaurants, total processing costs commonly run 2.2–3.5%+ per transaction — and most owners can't tell from their statement what they're actually paying for. We can. And for restaurants that want the line item gone entirely, our partner processors offer compliant dual-pricing programs that take your effective processing cost to 0%.

Where restaurants overpay on processing

Your processing cost has three layers. Interchange goes to the card-issuing bank (averaging around 1.8% in the U.S., higher for card-not-present online orders). Network fees go to Visa and Mastercard. Everything else is your processor's markup — and that's where the waste lives.

• Flat-rate pricing penalties. Flat 2.6–2.9% plans are simple but often expensive for restaurants with high volumes of small, card-present transactions that qualify for low interchange.
• Junk fees. Statement fees, PCI "non-compliance" fees, batch fees, annual fees — line items that exist because nobody questions them.
• Downgrades. Transactions that miss data requirements get bumped to expensive interchange categories. Fixing settlement timing and AVS settings can re-qualify them at lower rates.
• Card-not-present premiums. Online ordering rides higher interchange (~1.9% average vs ~1.7% in person). The way your online orders are routed and keyed matters.

How we cut your processing costs

1. Free line-by-line statement audit

Send one merchant statement. We separate true interchange from processor markup, flag junk fees, and calculate your effective rate so you have a real number to compare.

2. Negotiate or switch to interchange-plus

Interchange-plus pricing passes through actual interchange and adds a transparent, fixed markup. We either renegotiate your current processor's markup or move you to one of our partner processors — without disrupting your POS where possible.

3. Optimize how transactions qualify

Daily batching, address verification on online orders, and correct card-present setup can shift transactions into cheaper interchange categories automatically.

4. Or take processing to zero with dual pricing

Want the fee gone, not just smaller? Compliant dual-pricing and cash-discount programs through our partner processors display a cash price and a card price, so the processing cost is built into the card price — your effective processing expense drops to zero. These programs have real rules (card-brand compliance, state-by-state requirements, clear signage) and real guest-experience trade-offs, and we set them up correctly or tell you honestly if they don't fit your concept.