This one’s brought to you by… cartoon me, red in the face, arms flailing, clearly having a moment about credit card processing fees. You’ve seen it. You’ve felt it. That passive-aggressive little “fee” tacked on your receipt like a sad afterthought.
Look, it’s not even the fee itself. It’s the whole “woe is us” energy that comes with it. It’s the amateur hour justification that makes it worse. Every time I see that extra 3–4% line item, I don’t think, “Wow, small business struggles are real.” I think, “Cool, your business can’t absorb basic COGS.”
And that’s the hill I’ll die on. Probably not alone. Fight me if you want.
If you’re still adding a credit card processing surcharge in 2025, you’re basically shouting, “We didn’t build our business to withstand the way the world actually works.”
Cool. Just know I’m not coming back.
Let’s zoom out for a sec.
You don’t itemize your electric bill on my invoice. You don’t charge me extra because your rent went up. You don’t break down the cost of the napkins or ketchup packets. So why is merchant services—a completely normal and expected cost of doing business—treated like a special little snowflake on the receipt?
“Cash is king.” Yeah, it was. In 2002. The market has spoken, loudly and repeatedly. Consumers want digital. Tap-to-pay. Apple Pay. Venmo. Clean. Fast. Trackable.
And guess what? Electronic payments reduce human error. They cut down on theft. They make your accounting cleaner. That’s not some MBA theory. That’s just… real life. You don’t want to hear it because you’re clinging to outdated logic that worked for a business model that no longer exists.
Oh, and this specific rant? Brought to you by getting hit with a 4% surcharge on a high-margin professional service. Not a greasy spoon diner. Not a mom-and-pop convenience store. A professional service provider. Like… bro. Come on.
If margins are tight, here’s a little cheat sheet:
- Raise your prices by 3%. You don’t need to explain it. Just bake it in.
- It’s a COGS. It’s tax deductible. Breathe.
- Use a cash-back credit card for your supply runs. If you’re earning 1.5% back, you’re already offsetting some of that 3% fee you’re complaining about.
- Reclaim your time. You’re not sorting bills, doing cash drops, or tracking down manual errors. Every card transaction is time you get back to focus on revenue-generating activity.
At the end of the day, I’m not mad at the fee. I’m mad at the energy behind it. The “don’t blame us, blame the system” shrug. The disorganized operations masquerading as a policy.
Own your costs. Build them into your pricing. Respect your customer’s experience. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be over here still fuming… but digitally. No surcharge required.
