How to check if you are overpaying on card fees

You can settle this in about fifteen minutes with one statement and a calculator. What follows is the order I go through it in, and the specific things that turn out to be wrong.

This is the practical companion to what a practice should pay. That piece gives you the range to judge against; this one is the audit.

Step one: get the right document

You want a monthly merchant statement, not the summary email and not your bank statement. The bank shows a net figure after charges have been taken; the merchant statement shows what those charges were.

Pick a normal month. Not December, not your quietest month. Fixed monthly costs spread across low volume make a quiet month look far worse than your real position, and a bumper month flatters it.

If you cannot find one, your provider's portal will have twelve months of them. If you have never logged into that portal, that fact is itself a finding.

Step two: the one calculation

Add up every charge the provider took. Divide by total card turnover. Multiply by 100.

The mistake almost everyone makes is counting only the percentage lines. Terminal rental, PCI compliance, authorisation fees and minimum service charges are not percentages, so they hide from a percentage-shaped search — and in a practice with modest volume they can be a third of the total.

If the resulting number is under 1.4%, you are in normal territory. Between 1.4% and 1.8%, there is money on the table. Above 1.8%, something structural is wrong and the rest of this will find it.

Step three: eight things to look for

Work down the statement with these in mind. In my experience, most practices hit at least three.

1. A large share of volume on the non-qualifying rate. Look for a line called non-qualifying, standard, or tier 2/3. This catches transactions that failed the criteria for your headline rate — commercial cards, international cards, keyed-in payments. If a big fraction of your turnover sits here, your headline rate describes almost nothing you actually do.

2. Terminal rental you no longer need. Count the terminals on the statement. Count the terminals in the building. These disagree more often than you would think, particularly after a refit or a room change.

3. A terminal lease running past its usefulness. Hardware is frequently on a separate finance agreement with its own term, often longer than the processing contract. Renegotiating processing does nothing to it, which is exactly why it survives.

4. PCI non-compliance charges. A monthly penalty applied because the annual self-assessment questionnaire was never completed. It is entirely avoidable, takes an afternoon, and some practices have paid it for years.

5. A minimum monthly service charge you are triggering. If turnover dips below a threshold, you pay the shortfall. Seasonal practices pay this most summers without ever noticing the line.

6. Authorisation fees at odds with your transaction pattern. A few pence per transaction is irrelevant on a £900 course of treatment and material on a £30 follow-up. If your volume is many small payments, this line will be larger than you expect.

7. Charges for services you do not use. Gateway fees for online payments you never take. Virtual terminal fees for phone payments you stopped taking in 2023. Fraud tools bundled in at signup.

8. An anniversary uplift nobody agreed to. Compare this month against the same month last year. Contracts frequently permit an annual increase applied by notice, and the notice arrives in an email nobody reads.

Step four: decide whether it is worth acting

Multiply the difference between your effective rate and 1.2% by your annual card turnover. That is your rough annual prize.

For a practice turning over £400,000 on card, moving from 1.8% to 1.2% is £2,400 a year. At £1m it is £6,000. That is real money for an afternoon's work, and it recurs every year you leave it alone.

If the number is small, stop — you are on a decent deal and your attention is worth more elsewhere. That is a legitimate outcome and worth knowing with confidence rather than assuming.

The one thing to do differently afterwards

Put the renewal date and notice period in your calendar with a reminder eight weeks ahead.

The renewal is the only moment you have leverage, and it passes silently. A provider who knows you have not looked around has no reason to sharpen the price. Nearly every overpaying practice I have looked at was overpaying because a date went by, not because anyone negotiated badly.

If you would rather not do the arithmetic, send me a recent statement and I will do it — your effective rate, where it sits, and whether it is worth acting on. No charge, and if you are already on a good rate that is what I will tell you.