B2BPay Hub

Checklist · Statement Audits

Merchant Statement Audit Checklist

Published September 30, 2026 · Last reviewed · B2B Pay Hub editorial team · Reviewed by a B2B Pay Hub payments specialist

Run 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.

Why do this yourself first

A merchant statement audit establishes what you are actually paying, expressed as an effective rate across all fees rather than the headline discount rate. Doing it before you speak to any provider means you can evaluate an offer against a number you established yourself, rather than one supplied by whoever wants your business.

Step 1 — Establish the true effective rate

  • Total all fees for the month, including monthly, statement, PCI, gateway, batch and assessment fees
  • Divide by total processing volume for the same month
  • Express as a percentage — this is the only rate that matters
  • Repeat across three months; a single month can mislead

Step 2 — Separate markup from pass-through

  • Identify interchange, which is set by the card networks and paid to issuing banks
  • Identify assessments, which go to Visa and Mastercard
  • Everything remaining is your processor's markup — the only genuinely negotiable component
  • If your statement does not separate these, note it: that is a tiered or flat-rate statement, and the opacity is the point

Step 3 — Find the downgrades

  • Locate commercial, corporate and purchasing card transactions
  • Check which interchange category each settled at
  • Total the volume sitting in non-qualified or equivalent categories
  • Note the downgrade reason codes where your statement supplies them

Step 4 — Check your data

  • Does your invoice carry line items, quantities and unit prices
  • Is freight on the same invoice as the goods, or billed separately
  • Is a purchase order or customer reference captured at order entry
  • Is sales tax present, or explicitly flagged exempt when zero
  • Are payments taken in a virtual terminal — if so, Level 3 is impossible regardless of the data

Step 5 — Questions to put to your provider in writing

  • What percentage of our commercial card volume qualified at Level 3 last month
  • What is our markup over interchange, in basis points and per transaction
  • Which downgrade reasons appear most often on our account
  • Do you support Level 3 pass-through, and is it configured on our account
  • What would it take to move us to interchange-plus pricing

Educational reference material, not legal, tax or compliance advice. Rules, banking availability and provider policies change; check the linked primary source and the last-reviewed date before relying on anything here.

Cite this resource

Resource
Merchant Statement Audit Checklist
Publisher
B2B Pay Hub · B2B Pay Hub editorial team
Published / updated
September 30, 2026 /
Canonical URL
https://b2bpayhub.com/resources/merchant-statement-audit-checklist

B2B Pay Hub. "Merchant Statement Audit Checklist." Published September 30, 2026; updated September 30, 2026. https://b2bpayhub.com/resources/merchant-statement-audit-checklist

Attribution style: B2B Pay Hub (2026). Quote any passage with a link to the canonical URL above.

Related pages in this cluster

Part of the Statement Audits cluster. Reading a merchant statement line by line to separate markup from pass-through and find the downgrades.

QuestionMerchant statement explainedWork 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.Open Resourceestimate the annual gap on your card volumeEstimate 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 GuideFree Interchange Audit: Find Out What Your Card Payments Really CostWe do not quote a rate before seeing your statements, because a rate quoted without them is a guess dressed up as an offer.Open ResourceB2B Payments GlossaryPlain definitions of the terms that appear on a merchant statement and in a processing proposal, written so you can read either one without a translator.Open QuestionWhat is an effective rate, and how do I calculate mineYour 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 QuestionCost plus pricingInterchange-plus pricing passes through the interchange set by the card networks at cost and adds a disclosed markup, itemized separately on your statement. It is better than tiered or flat-rate pricing for most B2B sellers for one specific reason: it is the only model where you can see whether your transactions are qualifying. Under tiered pricing a downgrade is absorbed into a bucket, and under flat rate it does not affect what you pay at all.Open

Read next

  1. 1Merchant statement explainedWork 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.
  2. 2estimate the annual gap on your card volumeEstimate 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.
  3. 3Free Interchange Audit: Find Out What Your Card Payments Really CostWe do not quote a rate before seeing your statements, because a rate quoted without them is a guess dressed up as an offer.

Want this reviewed against your own setup?

Send your current statements, POS details and licence type. We will walk through what applies to your state and licence, and what to get in writing from any provider.

Get a Free Payment Review Discuss an Integration

Educational reference material, not legal, tax or compliance advice. Rules, banking availability and provider policies change; check the linked primary source and the last-reviewed date before relying on anything here.