The payments industry is constantly changing, with new technology, legislation and pricing changes being introduced regularly. For a hardworking business owner, it can be difficult to find the time to make a cup of tea, never mind sit down and analyse a merchant statement. To help make this necessary task easier, our expert payments partner acceptcards® has put together a quick guide on what to look out for on your merchant statement.

1. PCI Non-Compliance Fees

You may see a monthly PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards) fee on your statement. This is a common fee charged by the payment processor and in most cases is unavoidable, unless you self-certify on the PCI website and use an acquirer who won’t charge you the monthly fee. However, if you see the words ‘Non-compliance’ you are probably being charged a penalty for failing to complete the relevant PCI DSS questionnaire. The process for doing this is straight forward and most providers will offer assistance and support to help you become compliant. The fees for non-compliance can be pretty hefty, ranging from £10 per month to 0.30% of card turnover. There can also be significant fines from the card schemes for non-compliance.

2. Non-secure fees

Applied for payments taken over the telephone (MOTO), even when CVV2 details are recorded and for website (E-Commerce) transactions without 3D Secure or Verified by Visa. The charges can be significant and range from £zero to as high as 0.85%. Non-secure fees are charged by most payment processors so when checking your statement be aware that these fees may be listed in a separate section or as a separate line in with other additional charges.

3. Authorisation Fees

Will be listed separately to your standard credit and debit card fees and will generally be applied to every transaction, including the recent addition of contactless payments. They are typically an additional 3p or 4p and should be factored in with your main pricing when reviewing to check if you’re on a fair overall package.

4. Premium Cards

Classed as consumer cards that provide additional benefits such as travel insurance, loyalty scheme, shopping discounts etc. These cards should be charged at the consumer credit card rate but in some cases are charged at the commercial card rate, which is generally higher. They are usually shown as a separate figure on the statement – some show under the actual card type – i.e. ‘Visa Credit Card’, and then underneath it will list ‘Premium Cards’ others show them together i.e. ‘Visa Credit Card Premium’.

5. Card Machine Compliance

This isn’t something that will appear on your statement but is definitely something you should be checking. On 1st January 2018, a number of card payment machines became non-PCI compliant. In simple terms, the affected devices no longer meet the latest card scheme requirements and must therefore be removed and replaced with newer models. Read the blog acceptcards® published back in January to find out more about this – Is your card payment terminal still compliant?

Checking your statement takes 5 minutes, in fact it’s the perfect job to do whilst you have a cuppa! If you spot anything that doesn’t look right, or you just find it too confusing (they’re often designed to do that!), scan or take a picture and send it over to enquiries@acceptcards.co.uk and we’ll review it for you. If we think there’s a better option out there for you we’ll let you know who, what and how. If not, we’ll simply confirm you’re on the right solution!