“Cut Out the Middleman! Are you working with a ‘direct’ processor?”
If you have been solicited with the above or some variation, beware! This is a dead give away: You are about to be taken for a ride by a slick sales person.
There is always a new selling angle in this industry, but this one has seemed to stick. Probably because it makes a lot of sense.
This is an industry that thrives on smoke and mirrors. This being the case, we find ourselves constantly needing to bring people out of the fictitious processing bubble the merchant services industry has created.
If given the choice of working directly with the IRS to file your taxes, would you? If you did, do you think they would try and save you more money? What incentive would they have to do so? If you had an issue, how do you think the service would be? Let’s be blunt: Servicing both big-box businesses and you, do you think the IRS would care about you?
While you think about that, let’s establish another truth: As the world stand today, nobody works direct…nobody. Visa, MasterCard and Discover are all open platforms which have products issued and processed by different banking institutions. You can process direct with American Express, which actually will cost you more.
This angle is nothing more than a sales line – don’t bite!
