The Great American Heist: How Credit Card Processors Steal Businesses' Profits

By Robert L. Day and Kevin Harrington

BILLIONS of dollars are being siphoned off of American businesses every year. Merchant processing is the means. Inflated, made-up, hidden fees and forced interchange downgrades are the method for stealing merchants’ profits. If you think your company is immune, think again. As a former executive for one the world’s largest processors and now Managing Partner of weAudit.com, I’ve watched this industry deteriorate for almost 25 years. It used to be that right was right, and wrong was wrong. Not so today. Greed and corruption abound, and the lack of government oversight and regulation makes it easy for them to simply take the money right out of your bank account. It’s time to sound the alarm. In this book, I take you behind the scenes and show you the deceptive billing tricks processors use to overbill to the tune of millions of dollars a year for larger merchants, down to tens of thousands for small merchants. Guess this is why some say I am the most hated man in America by banks and credit card processors. For me, I wear that title as a badge of honor.

“I’ve used Robert to help with Kellogg’s, IBM, HP, and now Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Oculus. He sells himself short, but he has the team and resources to help small companies as well as the top 5 world’s largest! Do not overlook this company!”

Trevor Gleeson
Treasurer
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• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jul 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9781665745109

Robert L. Day

Robert Day is referred to as “the Industry Expert” by every major credit association. He shared a stage with Steve Forbes as well as co-authored a book with him, and speaks all over the country about the overbilling of merchant processing. Robert and his wife, Maureen, live in Southwest Florida and have five adult children and seven grandchildren.

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WHAT MERCHANTS ARE SAYING

weAudit.com was able to decrease the rate we were paying our credit card processor by 1.5% (a 43% decrease), resulting in enormous savings!

Melissa Selig

CFO - Grove Medical

Robert has helped our company save thousands of dollars through the years. This book will be helpful to so many people like me who are not in the banking business and don’t understand the lingo. The book will be an awesome addition to my business library.

Betsy Rhodes

Treasurer - Metal Specialties, Inc.

Thank you for writing this book to help educate business people so we can all understand the true nature of this segment of the financial industry.

Deanna Marcroft CBA

Credit Manager - Sierra Select Distributors

As a merchant, I am very glad Robert has written this book to help us understand the credit card processing industry and the pitfalls that we face in our daily work. The knowledge gained here will help us understand some of the complex issues so that we can better manage our card processing costs.

William Miller

Controller - Butler Brothers

We have great trust in the service weAudit.com provides Kerusso. Time and time again, they have protected us from overbilling on credit card processing.

Holly Grisham

Kerusso Activewear Inc.

This book is long overdue. If the banks and processors didn’t hate him enough already, they will for sure now!

Mark Jones

CEO - Rimz to Go

THE GREAT

AMERICAN

HEIST

HOW CREDIT CARD PROCESSORS STEAL BUSINESSES’ PROFITS

ROBERT L. DAY

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Copyright © 2023 Robert L. Day.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-4509-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-4511-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-4510-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023910277

Archway Publishing rev. date: 03/28/2024

CONTENTS

What Merchants Are Saying

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Disclaimers

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

1  You Decide

2  Why I Wrote This Book

3  How Can I Have the Lowest Discount Rate but the Worst Deal?

4  Fried Eggs

5  Interchange

6  How to Beat the Interchange Game

7  Who’s My Processor?

8  Discount Rate

9  Never Bundle Up

10  To Integrate or Not to Integrate

11  Fees: Made Up or Real?

12  Keeping Your Rebates

13  Different Billing Types

14  Payment Gateways / Virtual Terminals / ERP / POS

15  Processing Through Your Association or Buying Group

16  My Processor/Bank Audited My Processing Fees!

17  WARNING: Things are not Always the Way They Appear

18  Cash Discount - But, It’s Not!

19  Final Thoughts

Bibliography

Glossary of Terms

DEDICATION

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This book is dedicated to my beautiful wife. She has made it possible in many ways, from creating the design and providing input to supporting me and, most importantly, believing in me. Not just believing that I could do this but taking her faith in me to a much deeper level. If you know the song She Believes In Me, by Kenny Rogers, then you get what I’m saying. God knows I haven’t made life easy for this girl, but she never wavered. She is a true gift from God!

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My mom also helped make this book possible. Even though she passed away many years ago, she always believed in me and told me I could do anything I wanted to do and be whoever I wanted to be. She was one of my best friends. I’m okay with being called a momma’s boy. I own that title with no shame and wish she were alive to see the man I have become. My dad was always beyond frustrated with me, but my mom would remind him he was no angel in his younger years. She said I would grow up by the age of 50. How right she was! I guess some of us are late bloomers. How she lived life, always looking out for the underdog, could be a book in and of itself. Turns out, the apple didn’t fall far.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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I wrote most, and I do mean most, of this book while riding on my bike. Speaking notes into my phone, I would travel a long road that runs where I live. The road is flat, straight, and has very little traffic. Riding it is easy, giving me plenty of time to ponder what I wanted to write about.

Giving credit to my bike would be weird, but I do want to credit my buddies who have ridden many miles with me. I know many of them did not want to. Yet, they did it for me. They are amazing friends!

This is a picture of my buddy, Josh Downing, and me in 2016. We had just returned after participating in one of the hundred-mile rides for Multiple Sclerosis. I had to talk him into doing it every time. Although he hated those rides, he did them with me for several years, and I truly appreciated them.

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This is Chris Thompson, and me heading out on a quick twenty-mile ride. I had stopped riding for about three years, but Chris got me back in the saddle, which allowed me to plan this book while on the open road.

I also want to give special thanks to my daughter, Amanda Leyba, our VP of Operations and Partner. Trust me, being my daughter did not get her the title. She had to work way harder and prove herself more! While I had the questions, she had the answers. Amanda has been critical to my success.

Last but not least, I thank my buddy Scott Olthoff, President at CORE Construction Florida. While I’ve never cycled with him, he inspires me to go faster. So, while I am not fast enough to ride with him yet, I hope to one day very soon.

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I also want to credit my good friend, Jack Clifford, who is my biggest supporter and skeptic. I could never have built weAudit.com without him. Not only was he the largest investor and a great mentor with decades of banking and finance experience, but he also pushed me to be my best. Most everyone around me buys into my ideas, but not Jack. He is more of a prove-it kinda guy. This, of course, made me work all the harder.

I have always looked up to Jack as one of the smartest guys I know. And I will never forget that he told me on our way to lunch, Don’t sell yourself short; you are one of the smartest guys I know. I just laughed and told him he must not know that many people. But those words impacted me and changed the trajectory of my life. I will always be grateful for someone with so much success and experience who took the time to