The Blog

Scam for Restaurants!

One of our large volume fine dining restaurant client’s was approached by Bob who said he would save them over $300/mth on their fees. Our client asked us to evaluate. We said we needed to see the rates Bob was presenting, not just a number of $300 with nothing to back it up. It took the client 10 days to get a copy of the rate presentation. Bob doesn’t like to leave the facts behind on a piece of paper. That way he can’t get found out. He just blab’s “Savings of $300” over and over again and hopes the prospect bites.

Well, we looked at Bob’s rates and they were 50% higher than the rates our client was currently paying! The small print in Bob’s presentation exposed the scam. He was taking an average wholesale interchange rate for all restaurants in the United States and adding his markup, which came up to less than what the client was paying currently. However, this fine dining restaurant can’t be lumped into a comparison of interchange rates from a bunch of fast food places with $10 tickets and mostly debit cards. The fine dining restaurant naturally has a higher interchange rate from lots of rewards cards and corporate cards. Too bad you have to lie to get business, Bob. You might fool some of the people some of the time but not our clients, because we give honest, full disclosures and educate our merchants.