Understanding Your Processing Fees

Topic

Card Processing Fees

For

Office Managers, Doctors

Read Time

~4 minutes

Flat-rate pricing keeps your card processing simple and predictable. Here is what your rate covers, and how fees apply to successful charges, refunds, and declined payments.

Your flat rate, simply put

Smile Advantage Payments uses flat-rate pricing, which means one consistent rate on every card transaction. For fixed-rate practices, that rate is 2.85% + $0.30 per transaction. There are no pricing tiers to decode and no interchange math that shifts from one month to the next.

On the interchange (IC+) pricing most processors use, card networks charge small dues and assessments, usually around 0.10% to 0.15% per transaction, and those costs get passed straight through to the practice. That is why IC+ statements often carry line items that shift from month to month. Flat-rate pricing does not work that way. Those network costs are absorbed by Smile Advantage Payments, so your rate stays exactly 2.85% + $0.30, every card, every month.

What your rate covers

Your flat rate is made up of two parts:

• The 2.85% is the processing fee applied to the transaction amount.
• The $0.30 is the per-transaction authorization fee.

Just as helpful is what the flat rate leaves out. Smile Advantage Payments does not layer on the add-on charges some processors do. With your account there are no:

• Refund fees
• Monthly statement fees
• Gateway fees
• Terminal fees (for practices that use terminals)

Refunds and declined payments

A common question is how the rate applies when a payment is refunded or does not go through. Here is the breakdown:

Transaction	What the practice pays
Successful charge	2.85% + $0.30
Refund issued	$0.30 only. The 2.85% does not apply to refunds.
Declined or failed charge	$0.30 only. The 2.85% does not apply.

Good to know

Because the percentage only applies to money that actually moves, a refund or a declined payment never costs you the full processing rate. One thing to keep in mind: issuing a refund does not reverse the processing fee on the original sale. The $0.30 reflects the refund transaction itself.

The bottom line

Flat-rate pricing is built to be easy to understand, so you always know what a transaction costs. If you ever have a question about a specific fee on your statement, reach out to the Smile Advantage team and we will walk through it with you.