Card fees are the bill nobody reads. A rate that sounds small is charged on every dollar that moves through your shop, every month, forever — and the gap between two quotes that both look reasonable can be a few thousand dollars a year.
How this is calculated
Monthly transactions are your card volume divided by your average ticket. Your current annual cost is volume × your percentage rate, plus your per-transaction fee on every sale, plus your monthly fee, times twelve. The comparison applies your interchange assumption plus 5¢ per transaction with no monthly fee. Change the interchange assumption to match your own card mix — it is an input, not a quote.
What interchange actually is
Interchange is the fee the card-issuing bank charges on every transaction. It is set by Visa and Mastercard, published publicly, and identical for every processor in the country — nobody gets a discount on it. What varies is the card in the client's hand: basic debit and consumer credit cards sit lowest, premium rewards and business cards sit highest. Since October 2024 Visa and Mastercard have also lowered interchange for eligible small businesses, so the blended number on your statement may be lower than you expect — which is why the default here is an assumption you should adjust rather than a number to trust.
Why a blended flat rate hides the markup
A flat rate quotes you one number for every card. The processor still pays the real interchange underneath, so on a cheap debit tap the margin is wide and on a premium rewards card it is thin — and they set the blended number knowing how that averages out across a year. It is a fine deal for a shop that does not want to think about it, and a worse deal the higher your volume goes, because the markup grows with every dollar while the work does not. Interchange-plus splits the bill in two: the pass-through cost, and the processor's take, stated out loud.
How BarberFlow prices
Interchange plus 5¢ per transaction, no monthly fee, no setup cost, no terminal lease. If the numbers above say your current setup is cheaper, then it is cheaper — take the win. We price-match rather than argue, and either way the honest comparison is the one you can run yourself with your own statement in front of you.