← Back to the CertainPath pageEvery line on a processor statement, explained.
A realistic statement for a heating & air company on a tiered plan. Hover or tap any line to see what it is, what a fair version looks like, and what we'd do about it. Then flip the switch to see what we'd flag.
Fictional business, real fee structure. Amounts are typical for ~$82,000/month in card volume. Want a quick read on yours? Grade your statement in two minutes →
Merchant statement
Summit Heating & Air
2210 Refugee Rd · Columbus, OH 43207
MID 4412 0087 5520
Activity August 1 – 31, 2026
Issued September 3, 2026
Sales volume
$82,000.00
186 items
Refunds
($1,240.00)
3 items
Total fees
$2,586.64
deducted
Effective rate
3.15%
of volume
Interchange & assessments
Paid to the card brands and issuing banks. Real cost — no processor can waive it.Processor fees
The processor's own margin. This is the part that is negotiable.Monthly & miscellaneous
Flat fees that show up every month whether you run a card or not.Downgrades & surcharges
Transactions that were charged a higher tier than they should have been.Contract terms
Not charges this month — but they decide what leaving costs you.Two-thirds of the statement is real cost.
Interchange and assessments — $1,703.72 here — go to the card brands and the customer's bank. No processor can lower them. Anyone who says otherwise is moving the number somewhere else on the page.
The rest is the conversation.
$510.12 of processor markup is legitimate but negotiable. $372.80 is junk: penalties, made-up fees and downgrades. That's $4,474 a year on one account.
The biggest line isn't a fee at all.
Tiered pricing turns a fair-looking rate into a small share of your sales, then surcharges the rest. Moving to interchange-plus removes the tiers — and usually more money than every junk fee combined.
Now decode yours.
As a CertainPath member, send one recent statement and get it back marked up like the one above — with member pricing already applied to the numbers.