If you are looking at taking credit cards in your business or changing providers, never be caught out by signing up for a provider based on the headline rate.
Whilst advertised rates may appear to offer great value, there are lots of other charges that may seem negligible, but, actually, increase your true average rate quite considerably.
The general rule of thumb is that if your monthly transactions are less than £1000-£1500 a month, you will probably be better sticking with one of the pay as you go merchant account providers like Paypal, Stripe or Izettle.
We have created a simple calculator, below, where you just enter some basic details and it will calculate your monthly and annual costs and indicate your true average rate. If you are an established merchant, you might be surprised about how expensive your current provider really is.
Please note that this calculator assumes that all of your transactions are at the same rate. If you take corporate or international cards (and some charge cards like Amex), standard merchant accounts will normally charge a higher rate whereas pay as you go suppliers will charge the same rate whatever card is used.
This calculator is meant to provide a guide indication of how much your provider will cost you each year and was designed to help businesses compare pay as you go providers (who appear to be expensive when compared to normal merchant accounts) to merchant accounts (who will promote themselves with great headline rates and keep additional charges in the small print).
This calculator is one of a growing number of resources and support that subscribers to the Business Advice Centre can access, for an low single annual cost.
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