July 8th, 2015 by Jamie Estep
Nickel and Dimed to Death – FANF
Filed in: Merchant Accounts |
FANF or Fixed Acquirer Network Fee yet another cost riding on your merchant account.
What is the Fixed Acquirer Network Fee?
After the Durbin Amendment added new regulations regarding payment processing, Visa came up with the Fixed Acquirer Network Fee (FANF) to offset their lost revenue. These new charges that went into effect in April 2012 were one of two sliding scale fee structures, one being based on the number of locations, and the second being based on dollar volume processed in a month. For card present businesses, excluding fast food, the fee will be based on a business’s number of locations, ranging from $2.00 to $85.00 monthly per location. For card not present businesses and fast food the fee is based on monthly processing volume, ranging from $2.00 to $40,000.00 per month. Clearly most businesses are going to stay on the lower side of these ranges and shouldn’t fear a $40,000 FANF fee, as you would need to be processing more than $400 million a month in credit cards.
Can I be exempt from this fee?
Yes! But most businesses will not qualify. There is only one Merchant Category Code (MCC), 8398, that is exempt from paying FANF. MCC 8398 is the code for Fundraising for Charitable and Social Service Organizations. If more than 50% of credit card volume is not for fundraising then the merchant is no longer exempt from paying the fee. Note: Visa is watching closely for miss-categorized businesses as many companies think they qualify under this MCC when they do not.
There is one other exemption, but again probably not going to work out for you… Low to no processing, if you process less than $200 in a month the FANF is $0.00 and charged at 0.15% of volume between $200 and $1250 for card present merchants.
Basically either your business fits perfectly into MCC 8398 or you’re paying FANF.
