hostmerchantservices's blog

All merchants pay processing fees to a credit card processor (kohls credit card review), but all companies hope that the processor will stick to the agreement they signed and not charge any different fees.

While this is typically the way, some processors, including WorldPay have been accused of doing the opposite. They are charging fees to customers that aren’t in the agreement. In 2017, there was a class-action lawsuit against them stating that over 200,000 merchants were overcharged due to hidden fees.

While WorldPay settled the lawsuit, merchants today say that they are up to the same tactics. Here’s what you should know.

What is WorldPay Doing?

While it’s hard to put a finger on it exactly since their practices are far from uniform, WorldPay has a habit of adding on additional fees without disclosing them.

WorldPay has two types of fees – the card issuer fees that every processor charges and their own processor fees. Here’s where the problem lies – they randomly increase their processing fee but roll it into one transaction fee so unless merchants dig into the charges line by line, they won’t know.

Here’s the other problem.

The upcharges aren’t consistent. There’s no way to tell or predict what they might charge a merchant. Sometimes the same merchant gets charged different fees too. It’s mostly on rewards cards, but again, there’s no rhyme or reason to it so merchants have a hard time predicting their fees and most are unpleasantly surprised when they see their monthly statements.

Read more...