The Dangers of Billback Pricing
If you take credit and debit cards in your business, you will discover that you have some payment processing rate options from which you can choose. Your choice would depend largely on which payment processing service you decide to work with and which they prefer to service. Unfortunately, some business owners are unlucky enough to select a processor that has less than ideal ethics when it comes to a plan they propose to customers. We at Agapay, along with other industry leaders, want to make very clear that one plan in particular, Billback (BB), is the poorest plan out there for you, the merchant, but the most profitable to the processor! The worst part is that it has an extension called Enhanced Billback (EBB); both of which are extremely dangerous for merchants and bad for your business.
What Is Billback Payment Processing Plan?
Billback is a payment processing plan that allows your provider to offer you a flat rate like 1.79%. That means your monthly payment will include a transaction fee of 1.79% on every single transaction you made, regardless of the type of interchange category the transaction amount to. This seems to be better than other flat rate plans of 2.7%. However, in the next month, the merchant services provider looks back at transactions that qualified for over that amount and charge you on your next statement for the difference.
In order words, you will end up needing statements from two whole months to understand what the total amount the credit card processor has charged you for the previous month. And then it is further complicated by the fact that those second month payments are combined with the current months flat rate. It is purposely confusing and it does not need to be.
Yet still, it can be worse. Its next of kin, “Enhanced Billback,” is even worse.
Understanding Enhanced Billback (EBB)
The EBB simply means enhanced margin or more profit for the merchant services provider. Enhanced billback means the credit card processing company just enhances the billback by including more margin on top of the newly charged fee. What this means is that when you are charged under the billback rate you will also be charged a hidden markup.
So, apart from the fact that you are paying more than the percentage you were promised, you also end up paying a dubiously set markup since your payment processing company can easily add it into the already purposefully complex statements.
A Payment Plan That Wants You to be Confused.
As far as we are concerned at Agapay, Billback is the most confusing and fraudulent billing methods in the merchant cards processing industry. The confusion is further amplified as this billing method keeps changing names and method regularly. It seems that other card processing services do this on purpose so they can keep you from understanding the process while making money from you. Here are some other confusing names we have seen for Billback:
- Blended rate
- Mixed rate
- Enhanced Reduced Recovery (ERR), and so on.
Regardless of any acronym it is called, Billback and any of its variations are dangerous for your business, no matter how it is presented. You may already have been in some varieties of Billback without knowing it. That is how confusing it can become.
How to solve this issue? First, let Agapay help you! We will do a free analysis. Contact us today.
In the meantime, here is the one clear piece of advice we can offer:
Pay Only What You Were Promised
Many unethical merchant account services providers will promise you that you will get a low rate plan but don’t tell you the hidden loopholes that will sneak in later. Never allow yourself to be fooled; these plans are the worst when it comes to transparency.
So, here at Agapay, we recommend that you open your statements and check the description details of the plan, which should include the numbers of transactions and volume. If for any reasons these key strings of information are not there but missing, it means your credit card merchant company is hiding fees from you.
You need to pay only what they promised you, and that is what we will help you do here at Agapay.
We offer professional analysis that would reveal if you are under any form of billing variation. We can help you understand your processing rate plan, so you are not cheated on specific fees. Call us or email us today at Agapay and let us help your business save on credit card processing fees and get you out of dangerous Billback processing rate plans.