FAQ
Rates, machines, statements, and everything bolted to them — answered the way we’d answer across the counter. If yours isn’t here, the form goes to our experts.
The money
What it costs, who sets it, and how to read what you’re already paying.
It depends on your card mix, your average ticket, and your business type — so one number on a web page would be wrong for most businesses. We offer four pricing models: interchange plus, flat rate, cash discount, and surcharge. You pick. Most providers pick for you and never mention there was a choice. The pricing page has sliders that show how the four behave against each other — those are our real figures. For a real number, send one statement and we’ll run all four against your actual card mix. Estimates are subject to underwriting approval; restrictions apply.
No — and neither can anyone else. Interchange is set by the card networks and paid to the bank that issued your customer’s card. It is published, and it is identical for every processor in the country. A one-terminal café and a national chain pay the same. The only negotiable part of your cost is the markup your provider adds on top, so an honest comparison is a comparison of markup. Anyone promising to discount interchange is quoting you something else. More in Field Notes: what interchange actually is.
Ten minutes with your statement. Find the total deducted for the month and divide it by your total card volume. That percentage is your effective rate — the only number that describes what processing genuinely costs you. Then check whether interchange is listed separately from the markup. If it is, and the fees are ones you can name, your provider is being straight with you — and we’ll tell you switching isn’t worth the disruption. We say that regularly. More in Field Notes: how to read your processing statement.
Probably because the underlying schedule moved. The card networks revise interchange periodically — typically April and October — and when they do, your cost changes no matter who processes for you and no matter what your contract says. Processors raise their own markup too — that one has to be disclosed in advance, and it usually hides in a statement message nobody reads. It is the most common source of the call that begins “my rate went up and nobody told me.” Whenever you see an increase on your statement, call us — send the statement and we’ll find the line that did it.
The fee schedule is an exhibit in your MPA, and it is where quiet money hides. The usual roster: a monthly statement or service fee, a monthly minimum, batch settlement fees, per-transaction fees, a gateway fee if you take cards online or by phone, address-verification and voice-authorization fees, retrieval-request and chargeback fees, PCI program or non-compliance fees, an annual fee, a regulatory or IRS-reporting fee, and — the one with teeth — an early termination fee. And the one nobody can ever name: the misuse-of-authorization fee — Visa’s charge for a “ghost authorization,” when a card is run and then cancelled without a proper reversal, so the authorization never matches a settlement. Fifteen cents each since 2025 — small money, but on a statement it’s a tell that voids aren’t being done right. None of them are secret; all of them are in the schedule nobody reads. Send a statement and we’ll mark which ones you are actually paying and which ones are negotiable.
Yes — Arizona permits it. But surcharge and cash discount are different programs with different rules, and most of the trouble we see comes from running one while describing it as the other. A surcharge adds a fee to credit transactions only — never debit — and requires advance network notification, signage at the door and the register, and its own line on the receipt. A cash discount requires your posted prices to be the card price. Both need approval, and keeping the program compliant day to day is your job. We are not attorneys and this is not legal advice. More in Field Notes: surcharging and cash discount in Arizona.
It works, it’s legal in Arizona, and the rules have teeth. Credit cards only — never debit or prepaid, even a debit card run as credit. Capped at the lower of your cost of acceptance or 3%. Disclosed before the sale — signage at the door and at the register — and shown as its own line, in dollars, on the receipt. Notification runs through your provider, and the card networks publish the rules themselves — Mastercard’s merchant surcharge rules are here, and they are being revised, so what was true last year may not be true next year. Some states still prohibit or cap it. Done right it’s clean; done sloppy it’s refunds, chargebacks, and a processor letter. Weighing it against cash discount? Send a statement and we’ll model both.
Run the math on a typical mix — about 80% debit, 20% credit — per $10,000 in card volume. The legal part: 3% on the $2,000 of credit collects $60. The violation: surcharging the $8,000 of debit — including debit cards run as credit — collects $240. That is the trap: four-fifths of the money a sloppy program collects is the illegal share, which is exactly how programs drift into it. When it surfaces — and it surfaces, because receipts show the line — it means forced refunds, chargebacks you will lose, and real fines: Visa’s enforcement starts at a $1,000 assessment the first time a merchant is caught and escalates toward $50,000, $100,000, and $250,000 for continued violations — billed through your processor, passed to you, with account closure on the table. Visa has flagged 2026 as a stepped-up audit year. A closed account follows you onto the next application. It is not extra margin; it is a fuse. Follow the rules in the question above, or run cash discount instead — send a statement and we’ll model both.
Not if the program is set up right — compliant programs run for years without a letter. But enforcement is real, and it does not rely on luck: any cardholder can report a checkout fee to Visa from its rules and complaints page, Visa runs yearly mystery shopping through outside auditors, and fines land on your acquirer and flow down to you — starting at $1,000 and escalating, as the question above lays out. So run the program on Visa’s own paper, not on a rep’s say-so: the merchant surcharge Q&A, the surcharging FAQ for merchants, the considerations and requirements sheet, and Visa’s own sample disclosure signage. Or skip the homework — we set programs up compliant and keep them that way.
Yes — at the top of the ladder. Network non-compliance assessments scale with duration and willfulness: $1,000 the first time a merchant is identified, then $50,000, $100,000, $250,000 — and for prolonged or willful violations the published range runs to $1 million. Nobody pays a million for a one-week mistake; those numbers belong to merchants who were told, kept going, and treated the fines as a cost of doing business. And the networks don’t bill you directly — they assess your acquirer, and your merchant agreement makes it your bill, with account closure as the exit. The way out costs nothing: stop, fix the receipts and signage, and answer the acquirer’s letter properly. If a letter already came, call us before you reply to it.
No — and trying converts a fee problem into a legal one. Closing the account only stops the autodraft; the debt survives, because nearly every merchant agreement carries a personal guarantee — it follows you, not the entity, whether that’s an LLC, an Inc., a partnership, or a 501(c)(3). A sole proprietor is personally on the hook even without one. The acquirer moves to collections or sues on the contract, and an unanswered suit becomes a default judgment, with garnishment and liens behind it. Disputing the debits as “fraud” is worse: you authorized them in the agreement you signed, the dispute collapses the moment the acquirer produces it, your own bank can end the relationship for abusing disputes, and you land on the MATCH list — the industry’s terminated-merchant registry — which makes the next account brutally hard to get. The boring path is the only one that works: answer the letter, stop the violation, negotiate. If a letter came, call us before you respond.
The hardware
Terminals, POS systems, and the lease question.
The one that fits how you actually take payments. Customers pay at a counter: start with a countertop unit like the Clover Mini or Station Duo. Payment happens at the table, curbside, or on job sites: a handheld like the Clover Flex. Full-service restaurant: a station plus a kitchen display. We deploy Clover, Dejavoo, PAX, and First Data hardware, and we’ll talk you out of the expensive one if you don’t need it. Browse the equipment. Features and availability are set by the manufacturer and subject to change.
We offer both: purchased outright, or leased at a discount where the program allows it. Know what a lease is first. It is a separate agreement with a separate leasing company, it is generally non-cancelable, and switching processors does nothing to it. A payment that reads small can total several thousand dollars across a four-year term — a figure that appears nowhere on the page. Before you sign, we put the purchase price and the total lease cost side by side and say the word “lease” out loud. More in Field Notes: the equipment lease trap.
Ignore the demo and test the ugly parts. Six people splitting a check unevenly. Modifiers on modifiers. Courses firing on the server’s timing. What happens when the internet dies — can you still take a card, and what happens to those payments when the connection returns? Who is allowed to void, and is it recorded? Then ask about the deal, not the box: who owns the hardware at the end, what raises the software fee, and what leaves with you if you leave. More in Field Notes: what a restaurant POS should actually do.
Either. Around greater Phoenix we configure the system, install it in person, and train your staff before we leave. If you’d rather do it yourself, we ship it as a kit — same pricing, same support, same warranty either way.
Sometimes. A terminal you own can often be reprogrammed to a new processing account — it depends on the model and whether the old provider locked it. Leased machines usually have to go back to the leasing company; that’s the lease agreement talking, not us — see the lease question above. Send the model numbers with your statement and we’ll tell you what carries over and what doesn’t before you commit to anything. And if the device is ours — owned by The Place To Shop Local and placed with you — it cannot be moved to another account, even on the same rail.
The account
Who you’re actually signing with, and what happens when something breaks.
Neither, and we say so plainly. The Place To Shop Local, LLC is an independent sales partner of third-party payment processors — we are a registered partner of CardConnect, Authorize.net (owned by Visa), and many others. Merchant processing services are provided by the processor and its sponsoring bank under a separate agreement between you and those parties. What we do is the part you actually deal with: pricing, equipment, setup, and experts who answer when something breaks.
Yes — that is gateway work. We set up hosted checkout on your site, a virtual terminal for phone and mail orders, text-to-pay and emailed payment links, and recurring billing with a card account updater so expired cards keep working. ACH and eCheck are available for large tickets and B2B. Phone and keyed-in payments carry their own PCI compliance obligations — how card numbers are taken, entered, and never written down or stored matters, and those obligations are disclosed in your merchant processing agreement (MPA). We walk you through them at setup. To be clear: the gateway is your processor’s product, under your agreement with them. What you get from us is the setup, the integration, and experts who answer when it breaks. See the services page.
Don’t wait on a form. Call the processor’s 24/7 support line — it is on your setup sheet and on the machine itself. Then open a ticket with us so we know it happened. If you use the contact form, say your terminal is down — it jumps the queue.
Your card sales batch at the close of day, and the processor deposits them to your bank account on its funding schedule. The exact timing — and anything that can delay it, like holds or reserves — is set in your processing agreement, and we go through it with you before you sign, not after. If a deposit doesn’t land when it should, call us. Chasing the processor is part of what you pay us for.
A forced refund. Your customer’s bank pulls the money for a disputed charge back out of your account while it investigates, and the burden of proving the sale falls on you. Each one also carries its own processor fee, win or lose, and a high chargeback rate can put the whole account at risk. It is not the same as a refund you choose to give — a refund is customer service; a chargeback is a ruling. How the fight actually works — notice, reason code, deadline, evidence — is in the next question down.
That’s a chargeback. The cardholder’s bank takes the money back while it investigates, and you get a notice, a reason code, and a deadline to respond with evidence — receipts, signatures, proof of delivery. We help you put that response together, and we help you cut disputes off before they start: clear receipts, a card descriptor that matches your sign, signage that matches your pricing model, and always a valid, posted return policy. Chargebacks carry a processor fee, and too many put the account itself at risk — never let a deadline slide.
Application, underwriting, then setup. Underwriting is the processor’s call and varies by business type — we won’t promise a date that isn’t ours to promise. Our side moves at your speed: equipment programming, install, menu builds, and training are scheduled around your hours. Start with one statement and the application; we keep you posted at every step.
Yes — physical and digital, running through your terminal or POS, with balances your customers can spend only with you. Gift cards keep money in the neighborhood, which is the whole point of the name on our door. And because the design studio is at the same counter, the cards can be designed to match your brand instead of a template.
Yes — Clover Capital. If you process on Clover, you can qualify for an advance based on your actual card sales, repaid automatically as a fixed percentage of each day’s sales — slow day, smaller payment; busy day, bigger one. Approval leans on your sales history, not just your credit file, and there’s no trip to a bank. To be clear about what it is: a purchase of future receivables through the processor, not a bank loan from us. The cost and terms are in the offer, and we’ll read them with you before you take it — convenient is not the same as free. If cash flow is the squeeze, start on the contact page — check Merchant Services — and we’ll run the application with you. Eligible Clover merchants also see offers right in their Clover dashboard; bring us the offer before you accept it and we’ll read it together.
The stack
Card data, PCI, and the website side.
A penalty for not completing the annual PCI self-assessment with your processor — let it slide three months and a $99-a-month penalty starts landing on the statement, alongside the fees that ride with it: a $299 annual “security” fee and a $199 debit network PCI fee dropped in mid-year. It is entirely avoidable and costs you nothing but an hour. If you are paying it, you are paying for paperwork. The test itself is taken with your processor — our Cyber Security program includes one-on-one training for it: the cyber security team trains you one on one, walking the self-assessment questionnaire (SAQ) question by question, so you pass it, your Attestation of Compliance (AOC) goes on file, and the penalty comes off. We keep it current year to year — for many businesses that alone covers the price of our Cyber Security package at The Place To Shop Local.
Tokenization and encryption on the payment side, so a card number is never stored on your systems — not on the terminal, not on your website. On the web side, our Cyber Security package: a firewall, malware scanning, login hardening, and two-factor. At the counter, router and network configuration done right — segmenting payment traffic the way PCI expects. On mail: spam, phishing, and impersonation filtering, with DMARC monitoring so nobody can send as your domain. A firewall on your website doesn’t help if card data is exposed at the counter, so we treat the website, the email, and the terminal as one job.
Yes. Our hosting keeps your site patched, backed up daily, and monitored, on infrastructure with a 100% uptime SLA — the network stays up or the host pays for the downtime — and we find out it’s down before your customers do. Our business email puts email on your own domain instead of a gmail address. Our SSL service keeps the padlock in the address bar, renewed before it expires. Everything is registered in your name with you as the owner, and every package is month to month. If you ever leave, you take it all with you.
The studio
Gift cards, menus, and identity from the same counter.
Gift cards, logos and identity, menus, and full branding kits — designed by the same experts who set up your terminal, so what’s on the card matches what’s on the screen, the receipt, and the window. Logos are delivered as vector files, so they never pixelate. Menus are built so prices are the easy thing to change. Gift cards arrive print-ready to the card printer’s spec, matched to the program running on your terminal. It is work you own outright when it’s paid for.
Fixed scope, fixed price, fixed number of rounds — agreed in writing before anyone starts drawing. You see two or three genuinely different directions, not one idea in three colors. Two rounds of changes are included and stated up front; extra rounds are billable, and you hear about it before they start. No open-ended hourly billing.
The relationship
What happens next, and what you’re never locked into.
We separate interchange from markup and come back with the arithmetic, line by line — no discovery call before you get an answer. Send a normal month, not your best or your worst, with all pages including the fee summary. If your current pricing is good, that is what we will tell you. Rate reviews and quotes are estimates based on the documents you provide and remain subject to underwriting approval by the processor and sponsoring bank. Restrictions apply.
Our hosting, email, security, and design packages are month to month — nothing on that side locks you in. The processing agreement is separate: it is between you and the processor and sponsoring bank, and you should read it before signing. We go through the terms with you before you put a name on anything. If equipment is leased, that is a third agreement with a third company — see the lease question above. One caveat, in plain terms: promotions change this. If you took a promo — a free build, discounted equipment, or a reduced rate — and you cancel, we may call the difference due: the value of what was given or discounted. You’ll have that in writing before you take the promo, not after.
Queen Creek, Arizona, working across greater Phoenix. Monday–Friday, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM Arizona time, and experts answer. Call or WhatsApp us from the contact page. Phone support is also an accessibility accommodation — if the site or the forms don’t work for you, call and we’ll handle it that way. We don’t print an email address anywhere; spam bots harvest anything on a public page. The contact form delivers straight to the same inbox.
Yes — logos, brand colors, a short boilerplate about who we are, and the correct name: The Place To Shop Local, capital To, always the full name. “Shop Local” alone is not our name, and the kit says so. Ask through the contact form and we’ll send the current kit. Writing a story about payments? Our experts give plain answers on the record — plain answers make better stories.
We get asked a lot, and we like being asked — keeping money in the neighborhood is the whole point of the name on our door. We can’t say yes to everything, so requests go through the contact form: who you are, what you’re raising for, and your deadline. We read every one and answer honestly — a no comes quickly, not silently.
The paperwork
Cancelling, returning machines, moving banks, tax names, and holds.
In writing, to the processor — your agreement says how, and we help you do it cleanly. Expect three loose ends: equipment (see the next question), any promo terms (if a free build or a discounted rate came with the account, the difference may come due — see the contract question above), and any final fees your agreement names. We pull the agreement and walk the exit with you. No runaround — merchants who leave cleanly come back.
Depends on whose it is. Machines you bought are yours. Leased machines go back to the leasing company under the lease’s return rules — get a return authorization and a tracking number, and keep both, because most leases keep billing until the equipment is confirmed back. Devices owned by The Place To Shop Local come back to us. We require insured shipping on returns. Ask us before you ship anything; sending a machine to the wrong party is a slow mistake to unwind.
With a bank account change form plus a voided check or bank letter — we handle the paperwork with the processor. Keep the old account open until the first deposit lands in the new one: closing it mid-switch is how deposits bounce and holds begin. Your batches keep running the whole time; only the destination changes.
Your legal name, exactly as the IRS has it, with the matching tax ID. The processor files your 1099-K under the name and TIN on the merchant application, and when they don’t match IRS records, backup withholding kicks in: 24% of your gross card sales — gross, not profit — taken out of every batch, with some states withholding more on top. That money goes to the IRS, not a holding pen; you generally don’t see it again until you file your next tax return. Fixing it means correct paperwork, then roughly thirty business days after the IRS accepts it. The DBA belongs on your sign and your receipts; the tax line needs the real name. If the business has re-registered since you signed up, tell us the same week — not at tax time.
Holds and reserves are risk controls run by the processor and its sponsoring bank, spelled out in your processing agreement: a large or unusual ticket, a volume spike, disputes, or activity that doesn’t match what underwriting approved. The fastest way out is documentation — invoices, delivery proof, whatever explains the activity. Call us the day it happens; we chase it with the processor. And the best prevention is simple: run the business you told underwriting about.
Still stuck?
If it’s not answered here, send it over — our experts read it, and most replies come back within the hour.
Monday–Friday, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM Arizona time. Phone support is offered as an accessibility accommodation — if the site or forms don’t work for you, call and we’ll handle it that way.
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