Rhode Island Payment Alliance - Saving Businesses Big Bucks

Most businesses need to accept credit cards in order to stay competitive, but that little edge of competition includes a third party – opening a merchant account with the middleman known as the credit card processing service.

The majority of merchant accounts require the merchant to pay start-up and monthly fees as well as fees for each credit card transaction they process. Processing fees protect the creditor against fraudulent transactions, but they can cut into the merchant's profits if he does not pass the fee on to the consumer or limit credit card use in his store.

Business executive Greg Page of Narragansett, the founder of Executive’s Choice, LLC., has joined forces with some premier businesses in Rhode Island, with the straightforward mission of enabling merchants and business owners to take control of their costs involving debit and credit card payments.

"It's high time for Rhode Island's local businesses to get back in the game," Page said.

Enter the Rhode Island Payment Alliance.

The alliance is the creation of Patrick Graf. As a co-founder of the Revolution Card, which is now owned by American Express, Graf saw a need to change the way credit card service was handled in this country.

After forming Enablest as a credit card servicing company, and signing hundreds of merchants to discounted service plans, the next logical step was to form an alliance, and partner with the merchants themselves, thus giving them ownership in the program.

Page explains the simple yet powerful mission of the Alliance.

“Today, more than $1 billion in negotiable fees are paid to merchant service providers by Rhode Island business owners and is leaving the state and economy. It is our mission to return this money to the state of Rhode Island and alliance members by encouraging Rhode Island business owners to join together and become owners of their own merchant service company, and by doing so, taking control of what fees are paid and more importantly keeping the money local, with local business owners, in our state and benefiting our economy.”

Skeptics may think this deal sounds too good to be true. Page sets it straight by explaining what is entailed “behind the scenes” with credit card transaction fees and how the alliance is working to change all that, so that hardworking Rhode Islanders can keep a portion of that money in their own pockets.

Credit Card Processing Fees 101

Whichever credit card processing service you choose, that provider will be basing its processing rate on two sets of fees – connection and interchange.

Connection fees are individually set and determined by the processor or service provider and are often quite complicated. They are often set up in such a way to benefit the processor at the merchant’s expense through various added surcharges and hidden fees. These are often buried within seemingly simple plans like all-inclusive rates, bundles or tiered rates.

Interchange fee is a term used in the payment card industry to describe a fee paid between banks for the acceptance of a card-based transactions. Usually it is a fee that a merchant's bank (the "acquiring bank") pays a customer's bank (the "issuing bank"), however, there are instances where the interchange fee is paid from the issuer to acquirer, often called reverse interchange.

In a credit card transaction, the card-issuing bank in a payment transaction deducts the interchange fee from the amount it pays the acquiring bank that handles a credit or debit card transaction for a merchant. The acquiring bank then pays the merchant the amount of the transaction minus both the interchange fee and an additional, usually smaller fee for the acquiring bank, which is often referred to as a discount rate, an add-on rate.

Interchange fees consist of three main components:

• Discount fee, a designated percentage of the sales transaction amount.
• A preset per item transaction fee.
• Association Assessment fees, also set to a particular percentage of the sales amount.

Keep in mind: interchange fees are non-negotiable and merchants, regardless of their size or reach, will be charged these fees. Since these fees simply cannot be lowered or eliminated, connection fees become much more important to merchants' evaluating processors, especially for merchants looking for opportunities to control expenses.

How the Rhode Island Payment Alliance Can Help

Owner benefits.

RI Payment Alliance will match “Your Current Price,” no matter who your current processing service provider is. No matter how low your existing processing fees and charges are, they will match them. That is their guarantee to you. Your business will not incur any additional transaction, monthly or annual fees, not charged by your current provider. However, there is a three-year contract minimum with RI Payment Alliance.

Be an owner, not just a customer, by joining the Rhode Island Payment Alliance. You are not just transitioning your payment processing services to another merchant service provider. You become an actual owner of a merchant services company dedicated to and owned by you and your fellow Rhode Island business owners.

Earn money from processing.

By simply being an owner, you take back a percentage of the profits made by your current processor, and keep those funds in your pocket and our state and our economy.

Free advertising is a reward for the business owner that shares their experience with other business owners on the site, and 10 percent discounts are offered to members and owners for deals at various owner's businesses. Business owners will have the added benefit of displaying their business name and logo on the alliance website.

Become an ambassador.

The Rhode Island Payment Allowance gives credit where credit is due. If you refer others to their organization, you will be rewarded a residual for these contacts. Visit here to learn more.

The Ultimate Goal and The Bottom Line

RI Payment Alliance thinks big! Their goal is to continue growing the alliance, so that together with hundreds of other local business owners, they can put $1 billion back into the Rhode Island economy over the next five years.

Page gives you the bottom line.

“We will offer a merchant exactly what they already have, pay them a monthly residual on their own business, a monthly residual on their fellow owners’ business, and advertise them to hundreds of potential customers for free. We will also offer a service where if the merchant has a special they would like to let others know about, through our constant contact program, we’ll be able to blast an email to everyone in the system. We are also looking at a program where we can pull up a specific type of business in a certain geographic area, and either blast an e-mail, or a voice message to all those in the system. Example, Boon Street Dinner runs a fish fry special on Friday night. We will contact as many businesses, in say a 10-mile radius, as we can to let them know. This is the type of added value we want to offer to our owners. In these tough economic times, we want to be true partners, and help drive business in their doors, while reducing their total operating costs, and in the case of referring their friends, even provide an additional revenue stream.”

Contact Information

For more information on how you can get your business on board with RI Payment Alliance, contact Greg Page at (401) 305-0766 or at www.rhodeislandpaymentalliance.com, or contact Rob Sullo from Robert Black Entertainment at (401)742-2758.