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Holding Payment Processors Accountable

This website was launched in by Phillip Parker in 2009 as a modest blog dedicated to exposing questionable marketing and pricing practices within the credit card processing industry and how they negatively impact business owners. What began as a side project has since evolved into a widely recognized platform advocating for transparency, accountability, and ethical standards in merchant services.

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Phillip Parker

"It was infuriating watching shady merchant account providers take advantage of people, so I made it my life's mission to shed light upon and industry that siphons extreme profits from hard working business owners through complexity and overwhelm."

- Phillip Parker CPO Creator, Researcher, and Author

Confused Over Processing Rates & Fees?

Remove The Guesswork

Answer a few quick questions about your card acceptance practices to see what it would cost with other processors. Compare all rates, fees, and dollar cost in just a few seconds.

In-person transactions include tap, dip, or swipe at a physical terminal. These carry the lowest interchange rates because the card is verified on the spot.

Keyed-in transactions happen when you type a customer's card number into a terminal or virtual terminal. These are classified as card-not-present and carry the same higher interchange rates as online transactions.

Online transactions include e-commerce payments, invoices paid via a payment link, or virtual terminal charges. Like keyed-in sales, these are card-not-present transactions with higher interchange rates.

Slide to estimate how your sales volume splits between your payment channels.

Card-Not-Present: 30% | Card-Present: 70%

Enter your total monthly credit and debit card sales volume. This determines volume-based pricing tiers for processors like Helcim and Wells Fargo.

$

Enter the total number of card transactions for the month. Processors charge a flat per-transaction fee on every sale, so this directly affects your total cost.

  • Sales tax details (amount, indicator)
  • Customer code or PO number
  • Invoice or order number
  • Merchant tax ID
  • Merchant postal/zip code

Results in Seconds

Hundreds of calculations done in an instant. Personalized, easy-to-understand results.

100% Anonymous

No name, email, or phone number required. Nothing is collected or shared.

All Fees Included

Sorting processors from the cheapest to the most expensive based on final costs.

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