Merchant-Accounts.ca: The Demystifying Payments Blog
An educational series to help you better understand payments and e-commerce.
Rates and Pricing
February 12, 2025
by David Goodale
It's completely reasonable to revisit the fees that you pay once in a while. However, in fairness to the processor there has to be some reason why your rate should be lowered. In this video David explains when you should ask for a rate reduction, and how you should approach the conversation so that you can build a compelling reason and increase the likelihood that the processor will agree with your request.
How often can you ask for a rate reduction?
April 22, 2024
by David Goodale
In this quick video, David explains the simple math to help you figure out what your discount rate will be per month.
How To Figure Out What Your Discount Rate Actually Is?
December 08, 2023
by David Goodale
How much are credit card processing fees in Canada? Use our interchange chart and fee calculator to determine your exact processing costs.
How Much Are Credit Card Processing Fees In Canada?
October 10, 2023
by David Goodale
Some merchants that use Shopify express frustration over the Shopify percentage based fees that are charged per transaction. In this video David explains why payment processors charge percentage based fees (because of interchange fees and chargeback risk), and why most shopping cart software providers charge a monthly fee, but don't charge percentage based fees. He also discusses some options that some merchants have used in an attempt to lower their Shopify processing costs.
How To Lower the Cost of Shopify Payment Processing?
September 22, 2023
by David Goodale
Some payment processors have a 'standard practice' of raising credit card processing costs on merchants. This is dishonest and unethical. In this video David explains when rate increases are reasonable (which is very, very rarely), and how to fight back when it does occur.
Don't Accept Rate Increases from your Credit Card Processor
Updated March 29, 2023
by David Goodale
Why do some businesses get lower credit card processing costs than others? In this video David explores the criteria that cause some businesses to get lower rates than others and techniques that you can use to reduce your processing costs.
How to Negotiate Lower Credit Card Processing Rates
February 14, 2023
by David Goodale
David breaks down the current interchange rates for e-commerce merchants in Canada for 2023. These figures were taken directly from the Visa and Mastercard Canada interchange tables. These interchange rates apply not just to e-commerce transactions but also virtual terminal and other card-not-present type transactions.
Canadian E-commerce Interchange Rates for 2023
September 16, 2022
by David Goodale
Knowledge of credit card processing pricing models can save your business money. In this article we describe the Interchange Plus Pricing model for merchants. We'll compare it briefly to other models, state its advantages, disadvantages and give a practice example.
Interchange Plus Pricing
June 24, 2020
by David Goodale
Visa and Mastercard charge a very small fee called a card brand fee (also sometimes called an assessment fee). We will explore these costs and explain when they are incurred. Learn more about Visa and Mastercard assessment fees.
Merchants: How to Fight Back Against Credit Card Processing Rate Increases
June 21, 2017
by David Goodale
It is extremely frustrating for merchants to be notified of an increase to your credit card processing rate. In many cases, these increases may be unfair and add unnecessary additional expense to your business. Fortunately, there are protections in place that can help protect your business should this happen to you.
Learn how to fight back against rate increases...