BREAKING NEWS – Certain processors including TSYS are marking up the visa FANF fee to their merchants and claiming that this markup is part of the Visa fee. Please make sure that you are not a victim of this markup, you should never pay additional fees on top of this Visa assessment.
Details of the Visa FANF Fee
The Fixed Acquirer Network Fee (FANF) was implemented by Visa effective April 1, 2012. This fee is charged based upon your total business volume of card present/swiped and card not present/keyed transactions. It’s charged monthly and affects all merchants to a varying degree. The FANF is separate from the interchange fee and is considered an card processing assessment because the income generated from the FANF goes directly to Visa.
Ultimately, the total amount of the fee will vary depending on the following variables: MCC (merchant classification code, aka SIC code) and amount of card present businesses and the amount of card not present transactions.
Your card acceptance method is the largest factor determining the amount of the FANF fee charged and the costs for card not present/keyed transactions is higher than what’s considered lower risk card present/swiped transactions. The total amount of the Visa FANF for card present transactions is also based on the number of locations that the business operates. For card not present businesses, FANF is based on the gross Visa processing volume.
FANF fee can be waived for certain organizations such as eligible charitable and social service organizations. Visa will waive the fee for organizations classified under merchant category code 8398.
Bottom line, this is a tax on your processing enforced by Visa that increases your costs.
Here are a few examples:
- Retail business – Shoe store with one location and one merchant account that processes $5,000 in monthly Visa transactions as card present. FANF fee = $2.00/month.
- E-Commerce business – T-shirt sales online with a single location and one merchant account that processes $10,000 in monthly Visa transactions as card not present. FANF fee = $15.00/month.
- Pizza restaurant with one location one merchant account that processes $8,000 card present plus $10,000 card not present (for delivery orders). FANF fee = $17.00/month ($2 for card present transactions and $15.00 for card not present).
So for most accounts your fees will be $2.00 for card present transactions and based on your card not present transaction volume an additional $2.00 to $15.00. Exceptions exist for high volume merchants and accounts processing more than $40,000 in card not present transactions. Please contact a Leap Payments representative for further details.
