Industries
A handful of large invoices is the opposite shape to a café, and it flips which fees matter. Most of the advice aimed at small business is written for the other end.
On a $3,000 invoice, a 0.3% difference in rate is $9 — more than a month of terminal rental. Fixed fees barely register; the percentage dominates.
That inverts the usual advice. Chasing a free terminal while accepting a worse rate is a bad trade at this invoice size, and it is the deal most often offered.
Trade customers pay with business and corporate cards far more often than consumers do, and those carry materially higher interchange. A blended rate quoted on an assumed consumer mix will not survive contact with your actual card mix.
Worth having your real mix quoted rather than a standard assumption.
A deposit taken by phone is card-not-present, priced higher, and carries the fraud risk on you rather than the terminal. If a meaningful share of your work starts that way, it needs quoting as its own line rather than being folded into a terminal rate.
Tell us what you trade as and roughly what you turn over on cards. We quote it across the panel and are straight with you about whether it is worth moving.