Merchant-Accounts.ca: The Demystifying Payments Blog
An educational series to help you better understand payments and e-commerce.
Rates and Pricing

September 22, 2023
by David Goodale
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
Learn what interchange is, and how much it costs...

March 28, 2023
by David Goodale
PCI Compliance applies to all merchants accepting credit cards. WooCommerce can make starting an e-commerce website very easy, but it doesn't necessarily make it a PCI compliant solution. In this video David explores some of the PCI compliance issues to be aware of when selecting WooCommerce as your shopping cart software platform.
PCI Compliance and WooCommerce - What You Need to Know

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...