My Merchant Account Blog

Batch Fee

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

A batch fee is charged by the merchant account provider when a group of transactions is sent to the merchant account provider to be processed. For a retail merchant account, this is usually done at the end of business. For an Internet merchant account, this is usually done by the electronic payment gateway, once a day and can usually be set by the virtual terminal.

A merchant can close a set of transactions at any time, but if a merchant waits more than three business days after the sales transaction - the merchant account provider might downgrade some of those transactions to the non-qualified rate and the merchant risks losing the authorization.

Unlike the ACH fee, this fee is usually charged once a day - when the transactions are closed, even on the weekends. So in a 30 day month with a 25¢ fee, the merchant will see a charge of $7.50. In the United States, most merchants will not see this fee. High risk merchants and merchants in other countries will usually see this fee.

By locating a merchant account provider that does not charge this fee, a merchant could save almost $100.00 a year!