Card acceptance in your store, on your website and on a phone, settled into your Calder account. Processing is provided through Fiserv under an agreement between you, us and the processor.
Two things matter in a merchant relationship and neither one is the rate on the front page of a proposal. The first is when the money lands. The second is who picks up when a terminal stops working on a Saturday in December.
Funding. Batches closed by 9:00 p.m. Eastern fund to a Calder deposit account the next business day. There is no delay for a settlement account held here, and there is a one day delay for settlement to an account at another institution, which is one of the few genuine advantages of holding the operating account where you process.
Support. Terminal and gateway support is 24 hours a day through the processor. Anything involving your account, your pricing, your funding or a chargeback comes to our merchant services group during business hours at (423) 555-0106. We do not have a 24-hour desk for account questions and we would rather say so than let you find out at 11:00 p.m.
Interchange plus is our default and our recommendation. Interchange and network assessments pass through at cost, and what you pay us is the markup shown. The alternative is a flat rate that is simpler to read and, at any real volume, more expensive.
| Item | Fee |
|---|---|
| Processing | |
| Interchange plus, per transaction | Interchange and network fees at cost, plus 0.25% and $0.09 |
| Flat rate option, card presentAvailable on a relationship processing under $250,000 a year. Simpler to read and more expensive for most merchants than interchange plus, which is worth saying out loud. | 2.55% and $0.10 |
| Flat rate option, card not present | 3.10% and $0.15 |
| American ExpressSettled with your other card volume through OptBlue where you are eligible. | Priced by the network |
| Monthly | |
| Merchant account service fee | $14.95 |
| Statement and reportingNot charged if you take reporting only through the portal. | $4.00 |
| PCI compliance program | $9.95 |
| PCI non-validation feeCharged monthly beginning 90 days after boarding if the annual self-assessment questionnaire has not been completed. It is avoidable, it is not a penalty we keep, and the number of merchants who pay it for a year rather than spend 40 minutes on the questionnaire is remarkable. | $29.95 |
| Equipment | |
| Countertop terminal, rental | $27.50 per month |
| Countertop terminal, purchase | $389.00 |
| Wireless terminal, rental | $39.00 per month |
| PIN pad | $179.00 |
| Payment gateway, monthlyPlus $0.05 per authorization. | $19.95 |
| Virtual terminal | Included with the gateway |
| Exceptions | |
| Chargeback, per caseCharged whether or not you win the dispute. Representment documentation is due within 10 calendar days of the notice and the deadline is set by the card network, not by us. | $22.50 |
| Retrieval request | $9.00 |
| ACH reject on a settlement debit | $25.00 |
| Batch settlement, each | $0.15 |
| Voice authorization | $0.75 |
| Early terminationApplies during the first 24 months on an equipment lease or a term agreement. There is no early termination fee on a month-to-month agreement, and month-to-month is what we board most merchants on. | $295.00 |
Underwriting a merchant account is credit underwriting, because a chargeback on a merchant who has closed is our loss. Expect to provide the entity documents, the beneficial ownership certification, three months of processing statements if you have processed before, and, for a business selling anything delivered in the future, an explanation of how far in advance you take payment. Deposits, memberships, event tickets and custom orders draw the most scrutiny, and in some cases a reserve.
Most applications are decisioned in two to three business days. Equipment ships the following business day and terminals arrive configured for your account, though a point of sale integration takes longer and depends on your vendor's certification queue rather than on us.
Calder Merchant Advantage, the bundled terminal and processing package sold between 2014 and 2022, was retired on June 30, 2022 when the terminal it was built on stopped receiving security updates. Merchants on the program were converted to standard interchange plus pricing with the equipment replaced at no charge. Nothing in that program remains available and a proposal quoting it is not ours.
Accepting cards makes you subject to the operating rules of the card networks and to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. The rules that most often surprise a new merchant: you may not set a minimum transaction amount above $10.00 on a credit card, you may not impose a surcharge on a debit card at all, you may not require identification as a condition of accepting a card except where the card is unsigned, and you may not store the full magnetic stripe, the card verification value or the PIN block after authorization under any circumstances, ever.
You are required to validate PCI compliance annually. For the great majority of merchants that means completing a self-assessment questionnaire and, where you accept cards over the internet, a quarterly external scan by an approved scanning vendor. Both are included in the compliance program fee. A merchant who does not validate pays the non-validation fee and, more to the point, carries the full liability for a compromise.
If you experience or suspect a compromise of card data, tell us the same day at (423) 555-0106. The forensic investigation the networks require in that situation begins on a clock, and the assessments they levy depend in part on how quickly it started.
Send us three months of your current processing statements and we will show you, line by line, what the same volume costs here. It takes about a week and it is not a sales call.