Wednesday, August 11, 2010

AMEX Merchant Fees

For the last few years we have been able to offer a competitive merchant fee of 2.65% which included accepting American Express cards. As some of you know, if you have had your own merchant account in the past, AMEX usually charges a lot more than other card types. In fact, most merchant solutions will have a wide range of fees for visa, MC, Visa Debit, World MC etc. etc. and most are a lot more expensive to process that the basic rate that is quoted.
We have so far been able to keep to a single flat rate for all card types to keep it simple and affordable for you.
Unfortunately, AMEX is putting a wrench in the works by raising their fees dramatically in October of this year. We would like to keep a simple flat rate; we would like to continue to accept AMEX; and we would like to keep it affordable, but something has to change or we will be losing money every month!
When it comes to the crunch, it is you, our customers, who will notice the impact of whatever we do, so please give us your feedback. There is a poll top right of the blog with the options we are considering, so let us know your preference.
Thanks,
Gerry & the SimplySignUp Team

10 comments:

Unknown said...

I would vote to drop AMEX - it is rarely used, I have NEVER had a customer ask to use it.

Anonymous said...

I would drop AMEX-I'm not sure if I've ever had a customer pay with it.

Rebecca said...

Ditto. MC and Visa are sufficient. Drop AMEX.

Anonymous said...

I also have never had a customer ask to use AMEX. In my opinion I'd say, drop it!

Anonymous said...

Ditto!

Anonymous said...

Dear colleagues,

For our program, over 86% of the payments made via the YV system for 2010 have been by credit card. Unfortunately, I am not able to determine how much was paid by each specific credit card (VISA, MC, AmEX).
Please look at it this way: a customer pays $255 via a credit card for a class, based on
the current rate of 2.65%, I am paying $6.75 for the credit card fee. At 2.8%, I would be paying $7.14 - I would not want to lose a customer over 39 cents!!!!

My vote is to raise all rates to 2.8%.

I also noticed that the voting system on the blog allows individuals to vote more than once - can we really believe the polling data?

Anonymous said...

I actually have quite a few AMEX users and the 9:52 commenter had great points. What is a few cents?

Gerry C said...

FYI, overall there are about 10% of card payments using AMEX.

Gerry

Unknown said...

Same. AMEX is not well used. If they don't cooperate - drop them!

Gerry C said...

As there are several different opinions on this, we have given you control of what you want to do.
You can now go in to the Setup/Myinfo menu and pick Preferences which you can edit to choose not to accept AMEX. If you do accept AMEX, it will be at 3.9%. Other fees are unchanged.