An Unknown Black Box: Payment Processing Fees

Payment processing fees – a black box of fees and rates that most people don’t really understand, right? But did you know that as a restaurant operator, your best servers are costing you more in processing fees? And it can add up to be hundreds of dollars a month! Let’s break it down:

• In a typical restaurant payment, the transaction consists of two parts – authorization and settlement.
• At the swipe, the card gets authorized for 120% of the total, allowing for up to a 20% tip to be included in the final settlement.
• But what happens when a guest tips above 20%? You get hit with extra fees.  

• A 10 cent transaction integrity fee.
• A much higher interchange rate for the entire transaction.
• And potentially a trigger for a chargeback that is only going to waste your time to resolve.

But those extra fees and wasted time disappear when you have Ziosk for payments due to our unique payment flow.

• With the guest in control of payment, they swipe their card and add tip as part of one single transaction.
• This transaction is processed similar to a retail type of payment – no tip authorization and no 20% threshold.
• All payments are settled at the lower exchange rate and there are ZERO transaction integrity fees.

So what does this really mean in terms of dollars?

For a restaurant processing $120,000 a month, this will shave an average of 25 basis points off of processing rates resulting in $300 a month in savings just on payment processing alone, no matter your payment processor. Payment efficiency is made with technology; a change in merchant providers will NOT make this improvement for you.

With guests tipping generously due to COVID, that amount is likely even higher in your restaurant.  If you want to keep those dollars, talk with one of our sales reps about additional ways Ziosk can increase your bottom line.

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