Flat-rate payment processors make getting started easy.

You sign up online. You connect your bank account. You start accepting payments.

The pricing may look simple too.

One percentage. Maybe a transaction fee. Maybe a different price for keyed or online transactions.

But there is a much more important question:

How much are you actually paying?

• Not what the advertised rate says.

• Not what you think you are paying.

• Not what the processor's pricing page says.

We want to know your real payment processing cost based on your actual business activity.

At Nationwide Payment Systems, we have developed a simple way to help business owners figure that out.

In many cases, we do not even need a traditional merchant processing statement.

We can start with approximately 90 days of data from your Stripe, Square, PayPal, QuickBooks Payments, or similar payment dashboard.

From there, we can analyze what happened, calculate your effective cost, study your transaction profile, and estimate what the same business could potentially pay using a more customized payment-processing structure.

Why 90 Days of Payment Data?

A single week can be misleading.

A single month may not tell the entire story either.

Sales fluctuate. Refunds happen. Chargebacks happen. Average tickets change. Some businesses have seasonal spikes. Others may have one or two unusually large transactions that distort the numbers.

A 90-day review normally gives us a much better picture of how your business actually processes payments.

We can look at information such as:

• Gross sales volume

• Number of transactions

• Average transaction size

• Refunds

• Chargebacks

• Total processing fees

• Card-present transactions

• Card-not-present transactions

• Online sales

• Recurring transactions

• B2B versus B2C activity

• ACH activity, when applicable

That gives us something far more useful than looking at the advertised rate.

It gives us your actual payment-processing profile.

Step 1: Set Your Dashboard to the Last 90 Days

The first thing we ask a business owner to do is log into their payment processor's dashboard.

That could be Stripe, Square, PayPal, QuickBooks Payments, or another flat-rate platform.

Set the reporting period to approximately the last 90 days.

We want to see the big picture.

Ideally, the dashboard should show information such as:

• Total sales

• Total payments

• Refunds

• Chargebacks or disputes

• Processing fees

• Number of transactions

• Average ticket

You do not need to be a payment-processing expert.

You do not need to calculate anything yourself.

You simply need to give us enough information to understand what happened during that period.

A Screenshot May Be Enough to Get Started

One of the advantages of this process is that it can be very simple.

Take a screenshot of the dashboard showing your 90-day activity.

If your reporting system shows all the important statistics on one screen, that may give us enough information to begin the review.

For a more detailed analysis, however, we usually want the underlying report as well.

Step 2: Download the Detailed Report

Some platforms offer advanced reporting that allows you to download transaction and fee information.

Depending on the platform, the report may be available as:

• PDF

• CSV

• Excel

• Detailed transaction report

• Fee report

• Payment activity report

If you can download the report, send it along with the dashboard screenshot.

That gives us more information to analyze.

What If Your Processor Does Not Let You Download the Report?

That happens.

Some processors make detailed reporting easy. Others put better reporting behind upgraded plans or make the information harder to export.

That does not necessarily stop us.

You can use a full-page screen capture to capture the entire report displayed in your browser.

There are several browser extensions, screen-capture programs, and PDF tools that can capture a long webpage and turn it into a PDF.

Instead of sending ten or twenty individual screenshots, you can often create one complete PDF showing the entire report.

The objective is simple: Give us the data. We will do the math.

Step 3: We Determine What You Actually Paid

This is where the analysis becomes interesting.

We use AI-assisted analysis along with our payment-processing experience to review the information you provide.

One of the first calculations is your effective processing rate.

The basic calculation looks like this:

For example, imagine a business processed $500,000 and paid $15,000 in payment-processing costs.

Its effective processing cost would be approximately 3.00%.

That number becomes much more useful than simply saying: "My processor charges me a flat rate."

Now we have something we can analyze.

We Look Beyond the Percentage

The effective rate is only the beginning. We also look at:

• Monthly fees

• Transaction fees

• Online payment costs

• Keyed transaction costs

• Refund activity

• Chargebacks

• International transactions

• Recurring billing activity

• Average transaction size

• Number of transactions

We are trying to understand why your processing cost is what it is.

That allows us to build a much more meaningful comparison.

Step 4: We Build a Profile of Your Business

Two companies processing the exact same monthly volume can have very different payment-processing costs.

That is because payment pricing depends on much more than sales volume.

Before we estimate what your business could pay through Nationwide Payment Systems, we look at several factors:

Total Processing Volume

A company processing $25,000 per month is different from a company processing $250,000 per month. A company processing $2 million per month has another completely different profile. Processing volume matters when building a cost-plus pricing model.

Average Transaction Size

Average ticket can make a significant difference.

Consider two companies processing $500,000 per month:

• Company A has an average transaction of $25

• Company B has an average transaction of $2,500

They process the same amount of money but have dramatically different transaction counts. That matters because many payment costs include both a percentage and a per-transaction component.

What Type of Business Are You?

We also need to understand your business type. Every merchant is categorized using an industry classification or merchant category.

• A restaurant does not process the same way as a manufacturer.

• An insurance agency does not process the same way as a retail store.

• A wholesaler does not process the same way as a SaaS company.

Your business type helps us understand the likely interchange categories and payment methods available to you.

B2B Versus B2C Makes a Big Difference

This is one of the areas where a generic flat-rate pricing model may not tell the entire story.

If you primarily sell to consumers, your payment mix may include a large percentage of consumer credit cards and debit cards.

If you are a B2B company, your customers may use corporate cards, purchasing cards, commercial cards, business cards, or virtual cards.

Depending on how transactions are processed and what data is supplied with the transaction, some B2B merchants may qualify for different interchange categories.

That is why we want to know:

• What percentage of your sales are B2B?

• What percentage are B2C?

For manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, suppliers, professional service companies, and other B2B organizations, that distinction can be extremely important.

We Also Look at How Your Customers Pay

Where the transaction occurs matters. We look at whether payments are swiped, tapped, EMV chip, keyed, entered into a virtual terminal, paid through an invoice, paid through a website, recurring, or processed through an ERP or accounting system.

Each method creates a different payment profile. This is another reason that comparing payment processors based only on a headline percentage can be misleading.

Where 25+ Years of Payment Experience Matters

AI can calculate numbers very quickly. But numbers still need context.

Nationwide Payment Systems has been working with merchants and payment processing for more than 25 years.

That history gives us something AI cannot create by itself: real-world payment-processing experience.

We can take the numbers generated by the analysis and combine them with what we know about:

• Interchange

• Business types

• Transaction environments

• B2B payments

• Large-ticket transactions

• Recurring billing

• ACH

• Card-not-present transactions

• Level 2 and Level 3 data

• Cost-plus pricing

• Surcharging

• Dual pricing

• Convenience fees

The goal is not simply to produce another spreadsheet. The goal is to determine whether there is a better payment strategy for your business.

Then We Estimate What You Could Pay With NPS Cost-Plus Pricing

Once we understand your processing history and business profile, we can create an estimated comparison using Nationwide Payment Systems cost-plus pricing.

Cost-plus pricing is fundamentally different from a simple flat-rate model.

Instead of putting every transaction into one broad percentage, the pricing is built around the actual underlying costs associated with processing the transaction plus an agreed processor margin.

This allows us to show you an estimated comparison between:

• What you are paying now

• Versus what your business could potentially pay with NPS

The comparison can include:

• Current processing volume

• Current processing cost

• Current effective rate

• Estimated NPS processing cost

• Estimated NPS effective rate

• Estimated monthly difference

• Estimated annual difference

Now you have actual numbers to evaluate.

Sometimes the Best Strategy Is Not Simply Lower Processing Fees

There is another question we discuss with business owners: Should your business be absorbing all of the payment-processing cost?

For some companies, the answer may still be yes. For others, there may be compliant ways to shift some of the cost of accepting payments.

Depending on your business type, state, card-brand requirements, and how you accept payments, we can discuss options such as:

• Surcharging

• Dual pricing

• Convenience fees

• Service fees where applicable

• ACH payments

These programs have rules and cannot simply be added however a business wants. But when structured correctly, they may dramatically change the economics of accepting payments.

ACH Can Be Part of the Conversation Too

Credit cards are convenient, but they are not always the best payment method for every transaction.

This becomes especially important for businesses sending large invoices ($5,000, $10,000, $25,000, $50,000, or more).

ACH may sometimes be a better payment method. That does not mean eliminating credit cards; it means giving customers choices:

• Credit cards when customers want speed, convenience, or rewards.

• ACH when the economics make more sense.

That flexibility can become especially valuable for B2B companies.

Flat-Rate Pricing Is Not Necessarily Bad

There is an important point here. Flat-rate companies became successful for a reason. They made accepting payments incredibly easy.

For a small or new business, simple pricing can be convenient. The question is what happens as the company grows.

A business processing a few thousand dollars per month may value simplicity above everything else.

But when that business begins processing $50,000, $100,000, $500,000, or $1 million+ per month, economics become much more important.

At that point, a fraction of a percentage point can represent thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per year. That deserves a closer look.

Do Not Guess What You Are Paying

This is the biggest takeaway: You should not have to guess.

If you use Stripe, Square, PayPal, QuickBooks Payments, or another flat-rate processor, pull up your dashboard.

Set it to the last 90 days. Get the reporting information. Then let us analyze it.

We can determine approximately what you have actually been paying and help you understand whether another pricing strategy may make more sense.

There is no need to argue about advertised rates. Your own payment data tells the story.

What to Send Nationwide Payment Systems

Getting started is simple. Send us:

1. A screenshot of your payment dashboard set to approximately 90 days.

2. A detailed report or full-page PDF of the transaction and fee information, if available.

3. Your type of business.

4. Your approximate percentage of B2B versus B2C sales.

5. Any information about how you accept payments — in person, online, invoices, recurring billing, virtual terminal, ERP, accounting software, or other methods.

We will review the information and help you understand what the numbers mean.

Find Out What You Are Really Paying

Payment processing should not be a mystery. You already have most of the information needed sitting inside your current payment dashboard. The difference is knowing how to interpret it.

Nationwide Payment Systems combines AI-assisted payment analysis with more than 25 years of payment-processing experience to help businesses understand their current processing costs and evaluate alternatives.

We can show you:

• What you are paying

• Why you are paying it

• What another pricing model could look like

• Whether ACH or other payment strategies could reduce costs

• Whether passing some payment costs to customers makes sense for your business

If you are processing meaningful volume through Stripe, Square, PayPal, QuickBooks Payments, or another flat-rate provider, a 90-day review may be one of the easiest ways to see whether your payment strategy still makes sense.