In today’s competitive marketplace, small business owners must manage every cost to stay profitable. One area where businesses frequently overpay without realizing it is merchant processing fees. These fees—taken as a percentage of every credit card transaction—can quickly add up and significantly impact your bottom line. Many business owners don’t know that these fees are negotiable. If you’ve never thought about renegotiating your merchant processing fees, now is the time to start. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the process step by step so you can start saving money and keep more of your hard-earned profits. 1. Understand Your Current Merchant Processing Fees To begin negotiating, you first need to understand what you’re being charged. Merchant processing fees aren’t always transparent, but they generally fall into three categories: Interchange fees: These are set by credit card networks like Visa and MasterCard and are paid to the bank that issued the customer’s card. Assessment fees: These are also set by the credit card networks and represent a smaller percentage of each transaction. Processor markups: This [...]