payment industry news
Follow the blog for all of your payment industry news. We talk about FinTech, Credit Card Processing, High-Risk Merchants, and much more. Allen Kopleman has been providing merchant accounts for small business for over 20 years. Nationwide Payment Systems provides merchant account services to local businesses in South Florida.
Does the Debit Interchange Cap Apply to Small-Bank Debit Cards?
No. The federal cap on debit card interchange applies to debit cards issued by large banks, and debit cards issued by smaller banks and credit unions are exempt, so they can cost a merchant noticeably more to accept. That...
How Much Do Debit Cards Cost a Small Business Under Flat Rate vs Pass-Through Pricing?
On a $75 debit sale, a flat rate of 2.6% plus 15 cents costs $2.10. In the inputs of NPS's 2026 pricing study, the card-side cost of the same sale on a large-bank debit card is about 38 cents under pass-through pricing,...
Cheapest Payment Processing in 2026: What You Really Pay and How to Compare
The cheapest payment processing is the setup with the lowest effective rate for your own business, meaning your total monthly fees divided by your total card sales, not the setup with the lowest headline rate. Three things...
I Take Mostly Debit Cards: Is Flat Rate Processing Costing Me More Than Interchange Plus?
If most of your customers pay with debit cards, flat rate processing can cost you more than interchange plus, because a flat rate charges one percentage on every card while interchange plus passes through what each card...
Toast Alternative for a Restaurant Wanting Pass-Through Pricing
A restaurant that wants pass-through pricing wants to see what each card payment really costs: the fees charged by the card networks and banks, then a markup from the processor on its own line. A question to ask is whether...
Helcim Alternative for a Business Wanting Interchange Plus and Phone Support
If you already want interchange-plus pricing and a person you can phone, the question is no longer flat rate against pass-through. It is how to tell one interchange-plus offer from another, because two quotes can carry the...
Cheaper Alternatives to Shopify Payments for a Growing Online Store
When an online store grows, its card bill grows at the same speed, because most checkout pricing is a percentage of every sale. A cheaper setup usually comes from one of three moves: lowering what you pay on your current...
QuickBooks Payments Alternative With Lower Invoice Fees
Invoice payments are the place where a flat-rate card setup tends to cost the most, because of the prices the study quotes: Square charges a higher rate for invoices than for in-person payments, and Stripe adds an Invoicing...
Clover Alternative With Lower Fees for a Small Retail Store
A question to ask before leaving a bundled point of sale (POS) system: can the card fee, the software fee and the hardware cost show up as separate lines, so you can see what each one costs and negotiate or replace one at a...
What a retail store saves leaving Square for interchange plus
A retail store leaving Square for interchange plus (a pricing model where you pay the real card cost plus a disclosed markup) may save money on debit cards and on online and invoice sales, but the savings on in-person sales...
Cheapest card processing for a service business using invoices and payment links
For a service business that bills by invoice and payment link, interchange plus (where you pay the real card cost plus a disclosed markup) with an ACH option on every invoice, and no extra fee just for sending an invoice,...
Cheapest card processing for a B2B company invoicing $2,500 at a time
For a B2B company invoicing $2,500 at a time, interchange plus (also called pass-through pricing, where you pay the real card cost plus a disclosed markup), paired with Level 2 and Level 3 data on business cards and an ACH...