Pricing advantages once held by super-large acquirers—those whose merchants process more than 3 million monthly credit and debit transactions—appear to have retreated, according to the Merchant Processing Pricing Benchmark Study recently issued by The Strawhecker Group.
These jumbo acquirers had, on average, the lowest amounts for their processing and authorization fees says Robert Schmitz, senior associate at the Omaha, Neb.-based payments consultancy. The Strawhecker report did not include the actual pricing averages for the jumbo or smaller groups of acquirers, defined as small for those with up to 250,000 in monthly transactions; medium, 250,001 to 1 million; and large, between 1,000,001 and 3 million.