PayKings Logo

Free statement analyzer

What is your real effective rate?

Upload your last processing statement and see the rate you actually pay, every fee category behind it, and what looks high, in about a minute.

  • Free, no obligation
  • Results in about a minute
  • Account numbers masked

The math

What is an effective rate?

Your effective rate is the total you paid to accept cards in a month divided by the total you sold on cards that month. It is the one number that puts every plan, processor and fee structure on the same footing, because it counts everything: the percentage rate, the per-transaction fees, the monthly fees, the PCI fee and the surprises.

The formula

Effective rate = total processing fees ÷ total card volume

Card volume
$50,000
All fees on the statement
$1,750
Effective rate
3.50%

A worked example with round numbers. A merchant on a contract that says 2.6% can still land here once downgrades, assessments and monthly fees are counted.

Why the quoted rate is not the effective rate. A quote usually describes one tier of transactions, often the cheapest one. Cards that downgrade, rewards cards, keyed-in sales and Amex all carry higher costs, and fixed monthly fees are spread across whatever you happened to sell that month.

Why it moves month to month. The same plan produces a higher effective rate in a slow month, because the fixed fees are divided by less volume, and in a month with more small tickets, because per-transaction fees stack up.

How to use it. Compare your effective rate against a written quote that includes every fee, not against the headline percentage. If a processor cannot tell you what your effective rate will be at your volume and average ticket, they have not priced your business.

Fee categories

What the analysis breaks out

Every fee on your statement lands in one of these categories, so you can see where the money goes instead of one blended number.

Processor markup

The part of your rate the processor keeps. On blended and flat-rate plans it hides inside the discount rate.

Interchange

What the card-issuing banks charge. It's set by Visa, Mastercard, Discover and Amex, not by your processor.

Card brand assessments

Network fees passed through on every transaction. Small per swipe, meaningful at volume.

Monthly and PCI fees

Statement fees, PCI compliance fees, monthly minimums and anything billed whether or not you process.

Per-transaction and batch fees

Authorization, AVS and settlement fees that add up fast when your average ticket is small.

Chargeback fees

What each dispute costs you on top of the lost sale, and whether your plan is pricing you as high-risk.

Your privacy

What happens to your statement

  • It is stored with your inquiry in the same secure document store we use for merchant applications, so the specialist who calls you has already read it.
  • Account numbers, routing numbers and merchant IDs are masked in everything shown in your browser.
  • It is never sold, shared with other processors, or used for anything other than pricing your business.
  • You can ask us to delete it at any time. Our privacy policy explains your right to erasure.

Read the full privacy policy.

FAQ

Statement Analyzer FAQ

Everything you need to know before you upload

Any merchant processing statement from a US processor or aggregator, including Square, Stripe, PayPal, Fiserv, Worldpay, TSYS, Elavon and independent sales organizations. It reads the PDF your processor emails or lets you download, and it can also read a clear photo or scan of a paper statement.
A PDF gives the most accurate read because every number is machine-readable. If you only have paper, photograph each page flat, in good light, with the whole page in frame. Files up to 20MB in PDF, JPEG, PNG or WebP are accepted.
Upload the statement that covers all of them and the analysis reports the aggregate. If each location has its own statement, analyze the largest one first; a specialist can review the rest with you.
Some processors deduct a percentage from every deposit during the month and then bill interchange and other fees separately at month end. Your true cost is both amounts added together, which is why the discount rate on your contract can look far lower than your effective rate.
Your statement is stored with your inquiry in the same secure document store we use for merchant applications, and account and routing numbers are masked in everything shown in your browser. It is never sold or shared, and you can ask us to delete it at any time under the erasure right in our privacy policy.
A PayKings specialist reviews the same analysis and reaches out to talk through where your fees are high and what a merchant account built for your industry would cost instead. There is no obligation, and you can start an application straight from the results if you'd like.

Explore Related Industries & Solutions

See how PayKings supports adjacent verticals and the payment solutions that pair with them.

Solution

High Risk Merchant Accounts

Merchant accounts with industry-leading approval rates for hard-to-place businesses.

Learn more
Solution

Chargeback Management Merchant Account

Merchant accounts with real-time chargeback alerts, fraud protection, and dispute support built in.

Learn more
Solution

Payment Gateway

A secure online payment gateway with PCI DSS compliance, tokenization, and fraud protection built in.

Learn more

Ready to Start Processing?

Get approved in as little as 24 hours. No setup fees, no hidden costs.

Get Started Free
See All Industries →