Bill-Back Pricing
What is Bill-Back Pricing?
Bill-Back Pricing is a merchant account pricing method that is very deceptive and costly. You are charged a flat qualified discount rate for all transactions regardless of the card type. This discount rate is what you will see listed on your monthly processing statement.
Since Bill-Back pricing information appears on the following month’s statement, it is especially confusing because you will need back-to-back monthly statements to determine your actual processing costs.
Enhanced Bill-Back is identical to the standard Bill-Back model. The only difference is your merchant services provider adds an additional markup, enhancing your fees and their profit margins in the process.
Bill-Back Pricing is not easy to recognize unless you know what to look for. Usually, the Bill-Back surcharge fees are listed under a section called "Interchange", where you will see something like this:
Example - Jan BB195 Trans cleared at...
Example - Jan EBB208 Trans cleared at...
The BB stands for Bill-Back and the EBB stands for Enhanced Bill-Back.
This pricing method is far from being transparent and it only benefits the merchant services provider.