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Although most artists use Square for processing credit cards, I use Clover Go, a First Data product offered by First Bank where I have maintained my personal and business accounts for over 30 years. I like keeping financial things under one roof.  For use of the swipe device for my IPad, I pay both a fixed monthly fee regardless of sales processed, and a variable fee based upon the sales.  During the winter, I may process 0 to 3 sales per month but during summer when I do art shows I may process over 30 credit/debit card sales per month.  Last winter when I noticed that a monthly fee was over 14% of the sales processed, I decided to take a closer look at where this was originating.  This is important to me not only for the amount paid, but also knowing how much I might be giving up with a discount to close a large sale paid by credit card. It is also important to include these fees in pricing.  The analysis I present below goes beyond what a representative will tell you about your bank fee being “3-4%” for processing credit cards. Clover Go allows me to accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover, PayPal and American Express Cards.  The fee rates for Visa, MasterCard and Discover are the same. I do not accept American Express and I have not had any sales using a PayPal card, so I cannot comment on them other than past knowledge that American Express fees were historically high.

     Table 1 shows three monthly examples of the fees charged for various amounts and different number of sales.  The 14% is what motivated me to look at the fees more closely.  Table 2 shows all of the nickel and diming that goes on at the bank. These fees are calculated by either a fraction of total dollar sales or total number of sales.  It also shows the fixed monthly fees charged regardless of sales.  Table 3 is a calculation for the second example in Table 1.