Credit Card Processing

Should You Surcharge Customers for Card Fees? What the “Swipe Tax” Survey Says Business Owners Are Actually Doing A widely cited 2026 survey of 461 small business owners and 1,007 consumers. Kurv’s “Swipe Tax Survival Report”, set out to understand how rising credit card processing costs are actually changing small business decision-making, and how consumers […]

The same $100 sale, run through different processors, can cost anywhere from 16% to 67% more depending on which one you pick and whether the sale happens in person or online. Most business owners choose a processor once, early on, and never revisit that decision, even as their sales mix shifts or their volume grows

7 Credit Card Processing Fee Hikes Hitting Small Businesses in 2026: And How to Protect Your Margin Card network fee changes don’t usually make headlines the way a Fed rate decision does, but they hit small business margins just as directly, often more quietly, and more persistently. 2026 has brought a genuine wave of fee

Most business owners can quote their processing rate from memory, 2.6%, 2.9%, whatever the sign-up page advertised. Far fewer can tell you their actual effective rate, the number you get when you divide total fees paid by total card volume processed over a full month. That gap matters, because industry data consistently shows small businesses