Learned The Hard Way

Everyone has heard it before… we don’t accept AMEX here- the rates are too high. This is usually in response to someone charging a three dollar latte at the local coffee shop.  Let’s do a little comparison to show how foolish this decision is:

The business in question is a small local market that sells coffee and breakfast. Let’s figure that they do $5000 in gross monthly sales via credit cards. We’ll work with Visa first.

• 2% discount rate = $ 100 monthly in discount fees
• 20 cents per transaction. Let’s assume that their average ticket is $9. That means the store has approximately 555 transactions montly for an additional $111 per month.

Total fees exclusive of machinery, chargebacks, etc.: $211 per month.

Now for American Express:

• 3.25% discount rate =  $162.50
• No per transaction fee; instead pay $6 per month all inclusive

Total: $168.50

Someone please explain how a business should not accept American Express given the metrics? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

It’s even worse when the numbers grow. What I have found is that because of the per-item charges, the total percentage between discount and per-item fees approaches 9% using Mastercard and Visa’s fee system. That’s ridiculous. It should be the other way around- we don’t accept visa or mastercard. Unfortunately, business dictates that you must since checking accounts all use visa/mc for their debit transactions and it’s better to pay a few bucks to get the business….

So to all you business owners who do not accept AMEX, you are losing a tremendous amount of business and paying more to exclude AMEX patrons. WAKE UP!!