What should I ask my current provider?

In writing: what percentage of our commercial card volume qualified at Level 3 last month, and what is our markup over interchange in basis points. If they cannot answer the first, they are not measuring it.

Statements

How do I read a merchant processing statement?

Short answer

Work in three passes. First, total every fee for the month and divide by total volume to get your effective rate. Second, separate the statement into interchange (set by the card networks, pass-through), assessments (Visa and Mastercard, also pass-through) and markup (your processor's margin, the only negotiable part). Third, find the commercial card transactions and check which interchange category each settled at.

Written by: B2B Pay Hub editorial team
Reviewed: Reviewed by a B2B Pay Hub payments specialist
Published: September 30, 2026
Updated: September 30, 2026

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The fuller explanation

Most statements are not designed to make this easy, and tiered statements in particular group transactions into qualification buckets specifically so downgrades are not visible.

The fees people miss are the small recurring ones: monthly minimums, PCI compliance fees, statement fees, batch fees, gateway fees. Individually trivial, collectively often a meaningful share of the total.

Once you have the three numbers, you can evaluate any offer against a baseline you established yourself rather than one supplied by whoever wants your business.

Important caveats

Audit three months rather than one. A single month can be unrepresentative.
If your statement does not separate interchange from markup, that is a finding rather than an obstacle.

Other ways people ask this

These phrasings share the same answer, so they live on this page rather than on duplicate URLs.

Merchant statement explained
How to audit my processing statement
What are all these fees?

Follow-up questions

What should I ask my current provider?: In writing: what percentage of our commercial card volume qualified at Level 3 last month, and what is our markup over interchange in basis points. If they cannot answer the first, they are not measuring it.

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Where this fits

Resourceour checklistRun the analysis on your own statements before you ask anyone for a quote. Establishes your true effective rate, separates markup from pass-through interchange, and finds the downgrades.Open ResourceInterchange Savings CalculatorEstimate the annual gap between what your commercial card volume costs today and what it would cost qualifying at Level 3. Enter monthly card volume, average ticket, commercial card share and your current effective rate.Open QuestionWhat is my true processing rateYour effective rate is total processing fees divided by total processing volume for the same period, expressed as a percentage. It includes every fee on the statement: interchange, assessments, markup, monthly fees, PCI fees, gateway fees, batch fees and statement fees. It is the only number that describes what you actually pay, and it is almost always higher than the headline discount rate you were quoted.Open GuideB2B Payment Processing: A Complete Guide for Manufacturers and DistributorsB2B payments are not retail payments with bigger numbers. The card types are different, the interchange rules are different, the invoices are larger, and the buyer is an AP department rather than a shopper. Most of what this costs you comes from treating the two as the same thing.Open

Find out what your card volume actually costs

Send three months of statements and one representative invoice. You get back a line-item breakdown of what is downgrading and what it costs annually, whether or not you do anything with it.

Request an interchange audit