Why Pembroke Pines Restaurants Are Dropping Flat-Rate Processors
Square and Toast might be easy to set up, but flat-rate pricing is crushing local restaurant margins. Here is the interchange-plus math they hide.
The Problem With Flat-Rate Pricing
Square charges 2.6% + 10¢ and Toast averages 2.49% + 15¢ on every card — flat, regardless of the actual interchange cost of the card being used. On a debit card that truly costs the processor around 0.05% + 22¢ to run, a flat-rate structure means you're overpaying by well over 2% on that single swipe. Multiply that across thousands of monthly transactions and the leak becomes real money.
What Flat-Rate Hides
- • Debit and rewards cards get billed at the same rate, even though their true cost to process differs significantly
- • You never see the wholesale interchange cost set by Visa/Mastercard — only the marked-up flat number
- • There's no incentive for the processor to help you lower your effective rate, since their margin is baked into every swipe
Interchange-Plus: Seeing the Real Number
Interchange-plus pricing exposes the wholesale cost set by the card networks and adds a small, fixed markup on top. Pembroke Pines restaurants moving from flat-rate to interchange-plus, paired with a compliant cash discount program, can bring their effective processing cost down from around 2.9% to near zero.
See Your Real Interchange-Plus Rate
We'll show you exactly what your Square or Toast statement is really costing you.