This is the latest installment in The Official Merchant Services Blog’s Knowledge Base effort. We want to make the payment processing industry’s terms and buzzwords clear. We want to remove any and all confusion merchants might have about how the industry works. Host Merchant Services promises: we deliver personal service and clarity. So we’re going to take some time to explain how everything works. This ongoing series is where we define industry related terms and slowly build up a knowledge base and as we get more and more of these completed, we’ll collect them in our resource archive for quick and easy access.
Today’s term, Large Ticket Program, is a specially designed program for merchants who accept high dollar transactions on credit or debit cards. Visa, MasterCard and Discover all have their own Large Ticket Programs with different Interchange rates and requirements for merchants.
Visa’s Large Ticket rate is 1.45% and $35 for transactions above $5,000. This lower interchange rate accompanied with a higher per-item fee amounts to a lower overall effective rate for the merchant.
MasterCard qualifies Large Tickets as anything above $7,255, and the accompanying Interchange rate is 1.25% and $40 per transaction.
Discover, the most recent company to implement a Large Ticket Program has the lowest rate for this category, at 0.90% and $20 per transaction. Discover also sets the amount for ‘Large Tickets’ at transactions above $5,000.
Host Merchant Services offers this program to our larger merchants that may find it useful. While some processing companies hide added percentage points in the difference that exists between small ticket and large ticket processing, Host Merchant Services gives the savings directly to you. The Large Ticket Program gives you a rate that saves you more money in processing fees for all purchases $5,000 or more. If you qualify for the Large Ticket Program, contact us immediately for your large ticket savings.