Send one statement. See every line.

One recent statement, sent however is easiest

The input is a single document: your most recent monthly processing statement, the one your provider issues after each billing cycle. A phone photo of the paper copy is genuinely fine. So is a PDF, a forwarded email, or a scan, and if the fee detail runs onto later pages, send those too, because the pages after the summary are usually where the reading gets interesting. We never need account logins or banking access, and there is no form to complete; the document carries everything the analysis needs.

Some businesses have no statement in the traditional sense, only a dashboard from an app based provider. An exported processing summary or fee report does the same job. A business with no processing history at all, because it has not opened yet, starts from a short conversation instead: what you sell, what a typical sale is worth, and how your customers will want to pay. That produces a projected cost picture rather than an audit, and the projection becomes the benchmark your first real statements are held against.

Where the money sits on the page

The statement above is marked the way we mark real ones, and the marks fall into three clusters. The first cluster sits on the rate itself, where three layers hide inside one number: interchange owed to the bank that issued your customer's card, assessments owed to the card brands, and whatever your provider keeps on top. The first two travel with the card and cost the same through any processor in the country. The review exists to isolate the third, because it is the only layer your agreement sets.

The second cluster is the per item lines, the charges billed in cents against each transaction and each batch. They read like rounding errors, and they scale with your count rather than your revenue, which is backwards for a busy counter. Where Interac debit carries most of the volume, those cents are close to the whole cost of acceptance, and they earn more attention than the percentage that usually gets it.

The third cluster never varies at all: account fees, statement fees, PCI program charges, monthly minimums, rental on the terminal. These lines bill in a slow month exactly as they bill in a record one. Adding all three clusters and dividing by your card volume produces your effective rate, the single truest number in the whole exercise, and it appears nowhere on the statement itself.

A clear read, in writing

Within 1 to 2 business days the read comes back in writing: the effective rate you are paying today, the three clusters separated and explained in plain language, and how the same volume would be structured through each of the our acquiring and gateway relationships we hold.

The verdict takes one of two forms, and both count as the review working. Sometimes the structure does not match how you run, and the report shows exactly where, quantified against your own transactions rather than an industry average. Sometimes your pricing already holds up, and the report says so without hedging, leaving you the breakdown as a baseline for the next renewal conversation. What we will not send back is a manufactured verdict, because a review that always reaches the same conclusion stops meaning anything. If you want the model before the verdict, the pricing page walks through how a fitted agreement is built.

From verdict to a working counter

Proceeding is a decision you make after reading the report, never a hook buried inside it. When you do go ahead, the fit starts with the agreement, placed with the acquirer whose structure fits your volume best, and only then turns to hardware: a wired countertop unit for a fixed till, handhelds where the payment travels to the guest, tap to phone where it travels further than that. Equipment you already own stays in service whenever it can.

Deployment is scheduled where your revenue is not: before doors open, between services, in the slow season. The changeover is sequenced so your counter keeps taking cards throughout, with no downtime during the update process. Your current contract's end date and exit penalties get read and priced into the comparison first, so a recommendation to move has already survived its own costs.

Behind every deployment sits the same guarantee: if you are not satisfied with the solution we deployed, in most cases our team has closure costs waived or covers them. And for businesses that would rather run the whole exercise across a table than through an inbox, the office is downtown; the Vancouver merchant services page covers how the in person version works.