How to read your merchant statement like a pro.

Why statements are designed to be unreadable

Open your last merchant statement. Look at it for ten seconds. Now answer this: what's the actual all-in percentage rate you paid this month?

If you can't answer that in under a minute, your statement is doing what it was designed to do — keeping you in the dark.

Merchant statements in Canada have followed the same playbook for thirty years. Bury the real cost across a dozen line items. Use industry jargon nobody outside payments understands. Bundle fees together so the markup is impossible to isolate. Add monthly "service" fees you didn't agree to. Quietly raise rates twice a year and bury the change in a footnote.

It works because most owners have a business to run. You're not going to spend three hours decoding a four-page statement. So you don't. And the processor keeps quietly skimming.

The good news: once you know what to look for, every merchant statement in Canada becomes pretty easy to read. They all use roughly the same structure. They all hide the markup in the same places. This guide walks you through it.

The anatomy of every merchant statement

Whether you're with Moneris, TD, Chase, Square, Stripe, or anyone else, your statement breaks down into the same four sections. Names change. Structure doesn't.

1. Summary block. Total sales volume, total fees, deposits made to your bank account. The headline numbers.
2. Processing fees. The percentage-based charges on every transaction. This is where most of the cost lives.
3. Monthly fees. Flat fees that hit every month regardless of how much you process. PCI, statement, batch, network access, monthly minimum.
4. Adjustments and other. Chargebacks, refunds, retrieval requests, fines. Smaller bucket but worth scanning.

Below is a stripped-down version of what a typical Canadian merchant statement looks like. Real ones are messier, but the bones are always the same.

That fictional shop is paying 2.88% all-in. Looks reasonable until you realize the same business on Interchange Plus with a real processor would be paying closer to 1.95%. That gap is roughly $450 a month — $5,400 a year — going to fees that don't need to exist.

Let's break down each section so you can find the same gap on your own statement.

Section 1: Processing fees

This is the meat. It's also where the most damage happens. Processing fees are the percentage-based charges applied to every transaction you run. They live in three pricing models you've probably heard of.

The three pricing models you'll see

Tiered pricing is the most common — and the worst. Your processor groups your transactions into three buckets called "qualified," "mid-qualified," and "non-qualified." Each tier gets a different rate. The cheap rate is the one they advertise. The expensive rates are where they make their money.

Interchange Plus (IC+) is the transparent option. You pay the actual interchange cost (set by Visa and Mastercard) plus a small, fixed markup like 0.20%. Every transaction is itemized. No tier coding. Nothing hidden. More on Interchange Plus here.

Flat rate is what Square, Stripe, and Helcim mostly run on. One percentage rate for every transaction (Square charges 2.65% in Canada, Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.30 online). Easy to read. Almost always more expensive than IC+ above $10K/month.

If you're on tiered pricing, this is where you're getting hit.

Tier coding — where they bury the markup

Look at the sample statement again. Notice the qualified rate is 1.65% but the non-qualified rate is 3.15%. That's nearly double.

Here's the trick: your processor decides which transactions fall into which tier. They publish a chart in your contract showing some rules — but the chart is intentionally vague, and the actual application is up to them. Cards they don't like? Non-qualified. Rewards cards? Mid-qualified. Manually keyed? Non-qualified. Foreign cards? Non-qualified. Sometimes "non-qualified" just means "they wanted to charge you more this month."

Per-transaction fees

On top of the percentage, you'll see a flat per-transaction fee. Common amounts are $0.05, $0.08, $0.10, or $0.15 per transaction. Doesn't sound like much. Multiply by 600 transactions a month and you're at $60 to $90 in fees that hit every month.

For low-ticket businesses — coffee shops, convenience stores, lunch counters — per-transaction fees can do more damage than the percentage. A $3 coffee transaction at 2% + $0.10 is paying an effective rate of 5.3%, not 2%.

Section 2: Monthly fees

This is the section that quietly bleeds you regardless of whether you process $5,000 or $500,000 in a month. Flat fees. Every month. Forever. Until you switch.

The hidden fees nobody told you about

Here's what's likely sitting in your statement right now. Some you'll recognize. Most you won't.

How to calculate your true effective rate

Here's the only number that actually matters on your statement. It cuts through all the tier coding, all the bundled fees, all the hidden monthly charges. One simple calculation. Five seconds.

The effective rate formula

Divide your total fees by your total card volume. Multiply by 100. That's your effective rate.

That's it. That's the number. Doesn't matter how many tiers, how many monthly fees, how much obfuscation your processor packs into the statement. The total fees divided by the total volume tells you what you're really paying.

What's a good effective rate?

Depends on how you process. Here are the rough benchmarks for Canadian merchants in 2026.

If your effective rate is in the "too high" column, you're a switching candidate. Dough's transparent pricing models can usually bring you down to the "good" column or below.

If you're surcharging or running dual pricing, your effective rate should be at or near zero — the customer is paying the surcharge, not you.

7 red flags on any merchant statement

Once you've calculated your effective rate, run these seven checks. Any one of them on its own isn't necessarily catastrophic. Two or more is a signal it's time to switch.

1. You can't tell what pricing model you're on

If you can't look at your statement and say "I'm on tiered" or "I'm on Interchange Plus" or "I'm on flat rate," you're on tiered. That's a deliberate design choice — tiered statements are the hardest to decode, which is why processors prefer them.

2. There are more than three flat monthly fees

A reasonable statement has maybe two — a PCI fee and a statement fee. Anything more is junk. If you're seeing PCI plus statement plus batch plus network access plus monthly minimum plus regulatory plus annual fee, that's about $80/month in fees that don't need to exist.

3. Non-qualified or mid-qualified rates over 3%

Tier coding is bad enough. Tier coding where the non-qualified rate hits 3.5% or 4% is predatory. The actual cost of a non-qualified transaction is rarely more than 2.5% to the processor.

4. Your rate quietly changed from last year

Pull last April's statement and compare it to this April's. If the rates are different — even by 0.05% — your processor raised your rates and didn't tell you. This is standard practice and they're allowed to do it. They just don't have to make it obvious.

5. You're paying terminal lease fees

Terminal leases are almost always worse than buying or paying for the terminal upfront. A $200/month lease over 48 months is $9,600 for a $400 piece of hardware. Most lease contracts are non-cancellable. If you're stuck in one, you're stuck — but never sign a new one.

6. You can't find your contract

If you don't have a copy of your merchant agreement, your processor wins every dispute by default. Request it in writing. They have to provide it.

7. You haven't been quoted by another processor in 2+ years

The market has changed dramatically. New pricing models, new tech, new entrants. If you've been with the same processor since 2022 and haven't gotten a competitive quote since, you're almost certainly overpaying. The fastest way to find out is to send your statement to us — we'll show you the math at no cost.

What to do once you've decoded it

You've calculated your effective rate. You've identified the junk fees. You've spotted the tier coding. Now what?

You have three options, in order of speed.

Option 1: Call your processor and negotiate

This works if you have leverage. The script is simple: "I've reviewed my statement and I'd like to negotiate the PCI fee, the network access fee, and the monthly minimum. I've been quoted lower elsewhere and I need you to match or beat it." If you have an actual competitive quote in hand, this works about 60% of the time for monthly fees. It rarely works for the underlying processing rates — those are negotiated when you sign, not when you complain.

Option 2: Switch to a better pricing model with your current processor

If you're on tiered, ask to move to Interchange Plus. Most processors will offer this if you ask — but they won't volunteer it because tiered pricing is more profitable for them. Read the new agreement carefully. Some "Interchange Plus" offers from big processors still pack in 0.50% to 1% in markup. The honest version is interchange + 0.20% or thereabouts.

Option 3: Switch processors entirely

This is what most owners end up doing once they understand what's on their statement. Switching takes 2-3 days. Your bank account doesn't change. Your bookkeeping doesn't change. Your terminal changes. That's it.

If you're considering switching, here's what to compare:

• Effective rate (calculated from a quote, not the headline number)
• Pricing model — Interchange Plus, surcharging, dual pricing, or flat rate
• Monthly fees — should be no more than $10–$30 total
• Contract length and termination fees
• Terminal cost — buy outright or month-to-month, never multi-year leases
• What else you get — the Boost program is one example of a processor giving back instead of just taking