Most business owners glance at their merchant statement, see a number that looks roughly familiar, and file it away. We get it — these documents are designed to be confusing. Multiple sections, line items in industry shorthand, fees scattered across different pages.
But your monthly merchant statement is the only honest report card on what your eftpos is really costing you. If you can read it properly, you can spot rate creep, hidden fees, and overcharges that have been quietly running for months. Here's a plain-English walk-through.
What an Eftpos Statement Actually Is
Your monthly merchant statement (sometimes called a merchant service statement or processing statement) summarises everything that happened on your eftpos account for the month. There's some variation between providers, but they all contain the same building blocks:
- Account header (your business name, merchant ID, billing month)
- Total transaction volume processed
- Breakdown of transactions by card type and method
- Per-transaction fees charged
- Monthly fees (terminal rental, service fees, PCI fees, etc.)
- Net amount settled to your bank
- Total fees charged for the period
The trick is reading the breakdown, not just the totals. Two statements with identical "total fees" lines can hide very different stories.
Section 1: Total Volume vs Card Mix
The first useful number is your total processed volume — the sum of all card transactions. Below that, you'll usually see a breakdown by card type:
- Eftpos (debit, the local network)
- Visa Debit / Mastercard Debit
- Visa Credit / Mastercard Credit
- International cards (sometimes broken out separately)
- Premium / commercial cards (sometimes a separate line)
- American Express (usually a separate scheme entirely)
This breakdown matters because each card type has a different cost. A blended-rate statement might hide that 30% of your volume is going through more expensive premium and international cards. An interchange-plus statement will show this transparently.
Action: write down the percentages. They're the leverage you take into a rate review.
Section 2: Per-Transaction Fees
This is where the bulk of your eftpos cost lives. Depending on your rate structure, you'll see one of two patterns:
Blended (or "flat") rate
One percentage applied to everything. Easy to read, often more expensive. You'll see a line like "Merchant service fee — 1.4%" applied to your total volume.
Tiered or interchange-plus pricing
Multiple lines, broken down by card type and method. You'll see entries like:
- Visa Debit — Tap & Insert — 0.X%
- Visa Credit — Standard — 0.X%
- Visa Credit — Premium — 0.X%
- Mastercard Debit — Tap & Insert — 0.X%
- International — 0.X% + cross-border fee
Tiered statements look complicated, but they let you spot exactly where your costs are concentrated. A line you didn't expect to see (like "International — Premium" at a much higher rate) is a red flag worth investigating.
Section 3: Monthly Fees and "Other Charges"
This is where the leakage often hides. Watch for any of these:
- Terminal rental fee — flat monthly. Sometimes negotiable, sometimes waivable. Always worth questioning.
- Monthly service fee / minimum fee — kicks in if your volume falls below a threshold. Worth understanding the threshold.
- PCI compliance fee — sometimes a recurring monthly cost, sometimes annual. Watch for "PCI non-compliance fee" if you've never completed your Self-Assessment Questionnaire — that one is a chunky extra charge.
- Statement fee — typically $5–$15. Pure margin for the provider.
- Settlement / cut-off fee — sometimes a daily or per-batch fee. Adds up.
- Chargeback fee — applied per chargeback dispute, regardless of outcome.
- Refund fee — some providers charge to process a refund. Worth knowing.
- Authorisation fees — a tiny per-attempt fee, charged on declines too.
- "Card scheme" or "scheme assessment" fees — passed through from Visa/Mastercard. Legitimate, but sometimes stacked with provider markup on top.
Add all these up and divide by your monthly volume. That's the real cost on top of your headline rate. Most business owners are shocked by this number when they see it for the first time. We covered the worst offenders in 5 Hidden Eftpos Fees.
The Most Important Number: Your Effective Rate
Forget the headline rate quoted to you when you signed up. The number that actually matters is the effective rate — total fees divided by total volume.
The maths:
- Total fees on the statement (every line, including monthly bits) ÷ total volume processed = effective rate
If your statement shows $1,200 in fees on $80,000 of volume, your effective rate is 1.5%. That's the real cost of accepting cards through this provider — the only number that matters when comparing.
Most owners we work with are sitting somewhere between 1.0% and 2.5% effective. Where you should be depends on your card mix, volume, and structure — but if you're at the upper end, there's almost certainly room to come down.
For more on what your real cost should look like, see The Real Cost of Eftpos.
Spotting Overcharges: What to Watch For
Once you can read the statement, here's what to flag for follow-up:
- A new line item that wasn't there before. Providers occasionally introduce new fees. They're meant to notify you; in practice, that often arrives as a sentence buried in an email.
- Rate increases without notice. Some contracts allow the provider to lift rates with limited warning. If your rate has crept up, ask for the written notification — it should exist.
- "Standard" rate applied to transactions that should be lower. Cards that should route through least-cost routing (LCR) sometimes don't, especially if LCR isn't enabled on your terminal. We covered this in our tap and go guide.
- Premium card categories higher than expected. Some statements roll a high portion of cards into "premium" or "commercial" tiers. If your customer base is mostly retail consumers, this is worth interrogating.
- PCI non-compliance fee. If you see this, complete your Self-Assessment Questionnaire and get the fee removed.
- Fees you can't identify. If a line item isn't clear, ring the provider and ask them to explain it. If they can't, that's a problem in itself.
The Annual Statement Review
If you've never done one, set a calendar reminder once a year to:
- Pull 12 months of statements
- Calculate your effective rate for each month
- Plot it — you'll spot any creep over time
- List every recurring fee and ask whether each is still warranted
- Compare your effective rate to current market rates (or have someone do that for you)
This single exercise often reveals enough to justify a rate negotiation, a switch, or both.
What to Do If You Spot a Problem
Found a fee that shouldn't be there? Rate higher than you remember signing for? Charges you can't explain?
- Call the provider and ask for an explanation in writing.
- If the explanation isn't satisfactory, ask for retroactive correction.
- If they refuse and you've got a legitimate case, lodge a formal complaint via their dispute resolution process — every Australian provider has one, and they're obliged to engage with it.
- If you still don't get anywhere, the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) handles merchant service disputes for free.
Where We Help
If you don't want to wade through your statements yourself, send them to us. We do this for clients all day — read the statement, identify what's normal, what's creep, and what's outright wrong, and tell you what a competitive deal would look like instead. Free, no obligation.
Want a Second Set of Eyes on Your Statement?
Send us your last two or three statements and we'll come back with a one-page read on what's reasonable, what's expensive, and what's outright wrong. Twenty minutes is usually enough.
Book your free consultation here or call us on 1800 595 340.