Fee Type Configuration Parameters

There are multiple ways in which fees can be applied on the Platform:

• Directly to Entities - Applied to individual Merchants or Partners

• Using Groups - Applied to a group of Merchant or Partner entities.

• Per Transaction - Applied to Entities or Groups as each transaction is processed. (Fee Listener)

Now that you’re familiar with the Fee Structure and available setup options, we’ll get started by setting up the Fee type of your choice using your preferred method. If you are familiar with basic fee structure information, jump ahead to the Setting up a Fee section below.

Getting Started

Before you begin, it’s important to understand the makeup of a Fee configuration and the various components used to create the Fee setup exactly to your specifications.

Each section below covers the major components of setting up a fee with all available customizations and refinements. Each of these major steps offers instructions for your preferred fee use case:

• Set up a Fee: Learn the process of how and where to set up a Fee.

• Set Up a Fee by Type: Learn the specific parameters required to set specific types of Fees.

• Add Fee Rules: Learn the process of adding Fee rules to further refine Fee Schedule (Trigger) criteria.

Prerequisites

To ensure your experience is streamlined, make sure you’re familiar with the following information:

• Fee Types: The different categories of fees that can be created and charged.

• Fee Structure: Overview of the basic layout for a Fee configuration.

  • Fee Schedules: Available time or event-based triggers used to initiate a Fee charge.

  • Fee Rules: Options to further refine the criteria of the Fee Schedule.

  • Fee Modifiers: Options to redirect the Fee collection flow and who will pay the Fee.

  • Fee Collection Process: Overview of how Fee payments are collected and where they can be found.

Warnings

Review the following warnings before you begin to avoid issues and potential legal complications:

• Do not create or apply Surcharges as legal complications can occur. Visa and MasterCard specifically prohibit the application of Surcharges to cardholders on their card brand networks respectively.

• Convenience Fees can only be charged to customers using an alternative payment method (e.g. a website instead of in-person or mail/telephone orders).

Tips

The following tips will provide you with extra insight useful to the process:

• If you’re unsure of how much to charge for specific fee types, refer to the Visa and MasterCard card brand network guidelines.

Set Up a Fee

This quick overview will demonstrate the steps necessary to begin setting up the Fee configuration of your choice. For simplicity, this will serve as the foundation to set up all Fee Types. Each Fee Type will be covered in its own section with additional context added where necessary.

Fees can be set up for Merchants or Groups. See the following content for general steps to configure each basic fee application:

Note

Fees can also apply on a per-transaction basis. See the Transaction Fees section for steps on configuring a fee applicable to transactions or their amounts.

Set Up a Fee by Type

In the Fee Type Setup steps below, we’ll simply include the required parameter settings necessary to enable that particular Fee Type. Additional context and information will be provided within each section.

Choose the Fee Type you’d like to set:

• Boarding Fees - Fees collected from your Merchants as they board the platform.

• Chargeback/Dispute Fees - Fees collected for managing Merchants’ dispute responses.

• Convenience Fees - Fees collected from Cardholders for alternative payment method acceptance.

• External Fees - Fees collected for services provided outside of the platform such as Visa Fixed Acquirer Network Fee (FANF), Visa Integrity Fees, and MasterCard Merchant Location Fees or Value-Added Services like Omnitoken and SaferPayments.

• Interchange & Processing Fees - Fees collected to reimburse Interchange and other costs assessed by the processor and/or card brands.

• Platform Service Fees - Fees collected for custom Platform Service enablement

• Risk Decision Fees - Fees collected for triggering automated Risk Decisions on an entity.

• Risk Service Fees - Fees collected for performing a Risk Policy check on an entity at a cost.

• Surcharge Fees - Fees collected from cardholders by Merchants as an additional charge, usually to cover specific costs associated with the transaction, such as platform transaction fees.

• Transaction Fees - Fees collected when transactions are authorized and/or captured.

If you’re already familiar with the essential Fee Type setups, jump ahead to Fee Rules to learn how to further refine the Schedule (Triggers) of your Fees.

Boarding Fees

This customization allows our partners to seamlessly implement a portfolio-wide or individual new account creation fee to collect from their clients. 

Example: As a Partner, you would like to charge a Fee to your Merchants for boarding and whenever they board Sub-Merchants. This Fee allows the Partner to generate revenue from Merchants boarding under their portfolio, even if the Merchant ultimately has little or no activity after boarding.

Chargeback Fees

Chargeback Fees (also known as Dispute Fees) are fees set and charged to Merchants by Partners for offering the platform to process the Chargeback.

Example: A Merchant has received an initial dispute opening the chargeback process, also known as Retrieval. When a Chargeback Fee is configured and “Retrieval” is chosen as the Fee Schedule (Trigger) ("schedule": 19) , the Merchant will now be assessed a fee when the Chargeback Cycle is opened and Dispute Stage is “Retrieval”

Begin by following the steps in the Set up a Fee section and use the parameters below to complete the process:

This Fee is now configured to trigger to charge a Merchant whenever a Chargeback is created (First Chargeback Dispute Stage).

Convenience Fees

Convenience fees are fees set and charged by Merchants to Cardholders for the “alternative” payment method acceptance. “Alternative” refers to the non-primary payment methods provided by Merchants to Cardholders. This convenience fee amount is then charged to the Merchant by the Partner, based on the Partner’s Fee Modifier settings.

Example: A Merchant that typically accepts in-person payments and over-the-phone/mail order. The Cardholder requests to make a payment using the Merchant’s website to send a card-not-present payment. As the website is not the primary method accepted by the Merchant, they can charge a convenience fee to the Cardholder.

Begin by following the steps in the Set up a Fee section and use the parameters below to complete the process:

Important!

Convenience Fees can cause legal complications if configured incorrectly or not meeting the general card brand network requirements:

1. Convenience Fees must be disclosed to customer before completion of a transaction.

2. You must allow cardholders to cancel the transaction upon reading this disclosure.

3. Convenience Fees are only allowed for credit and signature debit card types.

4. Convenience Fees are only allowed for card-not-present transaction types.

5. Convenience fees cannot be applied to recurring, subscription or installment transactions.

Tip

Use a Fee Rule to only charge Convenience Fees over a specific amount.

External Fees

External Fees are fees that are assessed from external platforms, such as Visa’s Fixed Acquirer Network Fee (FANF) or MasterCard Merchant Location (MC Location), to a Partner for the usage of those services. In scenarios where Partners would like to charge a Merchant to cover the costs of those fees. In some cases, you may want to charge a markup for providing the service through your platform to your Merchants.

Example: A Partner is enrolled in both MasterCard Merchant Location (MC Location) and Visa Fixed Acquirer Network Fee (FANF) programs for its Merchants to improve interchange rates and reduce fraud. As both of these programs assess Fees to the Partner based on each individual Merchant’s information (such as number of locations, online-only, etc.) the Partner would like to charge 100% of the external services’ costs to the Merchant, or could even assess a 102.5% (as an example) for a small markup percentage for enabling the external service.

Interchange & Processing Fees

If you want to pass along these to your merchants you can set up an interchange fee schedule at 100% so that they are responsible for covering the fees. 

Example: A Partner would like to pass along the cost of acceptance for debit and credit card interchange to your Merchant.

Interchange fees require a more involved setup due to the various types of interchange events that occur. First, you must start building a percentage-based fee triggered by Interchange events. Then, you can apply conditional rules to assess debit network interchange fees, if applicable, and apply them to the Merchant or Group accordingly.

Tip: Use a Fee Rule to define the Interchange type or specific processor.

Debit Network Interchange Fees: Conditional Rules

After building the initial interchange fee order to properly assess debit network interchange fees, you must configure the following conditional rule settings under the Advanced Options section of the Add Fee modal:

Platform Service Fees

This customization allows our partners to seamlessly implement a portfolio-wide or individual new account creation fee to collect from their clients. creating a custom platform service fee in Payrix Pro is an ideal way to automatically bill your clients for your services based on your user agreement with them.

Example: The payment acceptance platform you offer as a Partner comes at a cost to the Merchant, usually in the form of monthly service plan costs or subscription costs. As the Merchant has agreed to your platform’s terms and conditions, it accepts the costs setup as a Monthly Fee Schedule eliminating the need for a third-party billing solution.

Risk Decision Fees

Risk Decision Fees allow you to charge fees to a Merchant when core platform risk services are used to evaluate when a risk decision is made for a boarding Merchant or when a processed Transaction has risk checks performed to ensure compliance.

Example: A Partner would like to charge a Merchant when the platform risk service performs an automated transaction check. This happens when specific risk criteria are met and delay the disbursement of transaction funds in addition to fraud and risk compliance concerns. As a result, the Partner will charge a fee when these events occur to actively discourage the Merchant from high-risk transaction actions and behaviors.

Tip

Use Fee Rules to refine the specific risk decision status or additional misuse criteria.

Risk Service Fees

Risk Service Fees allow you to charge additional fees for the use of integrated third-party risk service. This flexibility enables Partners to assess fees to Merchants that are higher risk requiring manual validations of the entity and its transactions on a regular basis in addition to fees assessed from the given risk service(s).

Example: A Partner would like to assess fees to their Merchants to cover the costs of external risk services they use to ensure their Merchants' compliance. These services could include OFAC checks, personal credit pulls, or other necessary risk items needed for boarding or ongoing risk reviews.

Surcharge Fees

Surcharging allows Partners to charge a per-transaction fee each time a credit card is used by cardholder that is charged to the Merchant but can be passed to the cardholder directly.

Example: The payment acceptance platform you offer as a Partner assesses a 3% surcharge to Merchants for processing credit-only transactions to offset associated processing fees. As a result, you enable each of your Merchants to collect this surcharge from their customers using credit cards.

Important!

• There are individual registration requirements and regulations by card brand before you can enable surcharges. The following steps will demonstrate how to enable the Surcharge once all prerequisits are met. Visit Understanding Surcharges for more details on the enablement requirements.

• Surcharging is still illegal in a few US states/territories: Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Puerto Rico. Be sure to follow your local and regional regulations accordingly.

Transaction Fees

Transaction Fees allow Partners to charge their Merchants on a per-transaction basis to generate revenue as a Partner.

Example: The payment acceptance platform you offer as a Partner charges a per-transaction fee in the form of a flat rate authorization fee and a captured amount percentage. This is a common Fee model in the Payments industry commonly seen as “Transaction Processing Fees: 10¢ + 3%” for example.

This Transaction fee will use a two-part fee setup that involves the creation of multiple fees. First, set up a flat rate fee for all credit card authorizations. Then, create another percentage-based fee for credit card captures transactions. The reason this process requires two steps is because two fees are triggered simultaneously. The flat rate auth fee ensures that a fee is charged each time a credit card transaction is processed. Then, an additional percentage is calculated when the funds are captured to offset any processor batching or settlement costs associated with the transaction.

The following example is modeled after industry-standard payment processing fees: Flat Fee + % of the transaction total:

1. First, you’ll setup a flat rate authorization fee using the parameters below:

   Add Fee Parameter	Required Value	Note
   When to trigger the fee?	Auth	The Fee is triggered at the time of authorization of a transaction. You can also use the following Fee Schedules: Refund. The Fee triggers when a refund transaction is processed.
   How much is the fee?	Actual	N/A
   Amount	{yourFeeAmount}	The numerical fee amount, written in basis points to represent a dollar amount (Example: 015 = $0.15). Warning: Refer to each card brand and processor’s policies on Transaction fees to ensure compliance.
   Fee Start Date	{yourStartDate}	It is recommended to use “today’s” date as the Fee Start Date to make the Fee effective immediately.
   Transaction Fee	Enabled	Checkbox available under the “Advanced Options” section of the dialog.

2. Then, you must configure another percentage-based fee for the transaction’s total amount:  

   Add Fee Parameter	Required Value	Note
   When to trigger the fee?	Capture	The Fee triggers at the capture time of a Transaction.
   How much is the fee?	Percentage
   Amount	{yourFeeAmount}	The percentage amount, written in basis points. (Example: 300 = 3.00%). Warning: Refer to each card brand and processor’s policies on Transaction fees to ensure compliance.
   Fee Start Date	{yourStartDate}	It is recommended to use “today’s” date as the Fee Start Date to make the Fee effective immediately.
   Transaction Fee	Enabled	Checkbox available under the “Advanced Options” section of the dialog.

Result: Your Flat Rate + Percentage transaction fee is active and all transactions processed through your integration will be charge your according transaction fee.

Tip

Use Fee Rules to define the specific method of payment acceptance can trigger the Fee.

Add Fee Modifiers

To change the entity that will be paying the cost for the Fee charge, you’ll need to setup a Fee Modifier.

After you’ve configured you’re initial Fee Type, to add additional Fee Rules, follow the steps below:

Add Fee Rules

To configure and refine the criteria of the Fee Schedule or “When to trigger the fee?” selection of a fee you’ve just created, follow the steps below. This process will not work if you have not set up a new Fee or are selecting an existing Fee configuration. See Setting up a Fee above for steps to set up a Fee if you’re not using an existing Fee setup.

See the following steps to add a Fee Rule:

Additional Resources

For additional Fee-related resources, see the associated articles:

• Fee Structure

• Refund a Collected Fee