FAQ
Last updated: November 2026. Published by Avendo.
This page answers 48 common questions about payment processing reporting, merchant statements, processing costs and how Avendo works.
Answers are written by Avendo, which publishes this site. Market figures are credited to their publishers.
Payment processing reporting is the set of statements and reports that show what you sold by card, what each sale cost to process, and what money reached your bank. Avendo provides merchants with clearer pricing and processing reports, so a small business can see those numbers without decoding a dense processor statement line by line.
Payment processing means moving money from a customer's card or account to a merchant's bank account after a purchase. The checkout collects the card details, a processor sends the transaction through the card network to the issuing bank for approval, and approved funds settle to the merchant, minus fees. Avendo connects that checkout step to multiple processors.
Common examples include a shopper paying by credit card on an online store, a customer paying by debit card, a business paying a supplier by ACH bank transfer, and a recurring subscription charge. For e-commerce businesses, the most common case is a card-not-present transaction, where the card is entered on a checkout page instead of presented in person.
Common alternatives include payment acceptance, card processing, merchant processing, transaction processing and payment handling. In contracts you may also see acquiring, which refers to the bank or processor side that accepts card payments for the merchant. On this site, payment processing and merchant processing both mean accepting card payments and settling them to your account.
Depending on context, you can say handling data, analyzing data, compiling records or reporting. In payments, processing information usually means turning raw transaction records into a usable report: totals by day, by card brand and by fee type. That compiled view is what a merchant processing report gives you, and it is the focus of this Avendo resource.
A payment that shows as processing has been submitted but has not finished moving through approval and settlement. Card authorizations usually return in seconds, while settlement to the merchant's bank typically takes longer, often a business day or more depending on the processor and bank. A processing report helps you match settled amounts to the sales behind them.
The message usually means the checkout has sent the card details and is waiting for a response from the processor or the card issuer. Most card approvals come back within seconds. Long waits can come from a slow connection, an extra verification step from the issuer, or a processor delay. Customers should avoid paying twice until they see a final confirmation.
Most businesses do not build one from scratch, because it requires processor relationships, card network rules and PCI DSS compliance. Small e-commerce businesses usually connect a checkout to an existing processor or gateway. Avendo takes a different route: it connects your existing checkout to multiple PCI DSS-compliant processors and routes each transaction to the best available rate.
A merchant processing report is a summary of your card activity for a period: sales volume, number of transactions, refunds, chargebacks and every fee your processor charged. Most processors send it as a monthly merchant statement. Avendo focuses on making pricing and processing reports clearer, so merchants can understand what card acceptance really costs them.
A typical merchant statement has account information and the statement period, a summary page with totals, a daily or batch activity section, a card brand summary, a fee breakdown, and any chargebacks or adjustments. Layouts differ by processor, so the same fee can appear under different names. Our guide to merchant processing reports walks through each section.
Your merchant statement is the most complete record of what card acceptance actually cost you. It shows whether your rates match your agreement, whether new fees appeared, and how refunds and chargebacks affected deposits. Card fees add up: Beast Insights reports that US merchants paid a record $198.25 billion in card fees in 2025.
Review it every month when the statement arrives, and compare it with the previous month. A monthly check catches new fees, rate changes and unusual chargebacks while they are still easy to question. Focus first on three numbers: your effective rate, your total fees, and any line item that did not appear the month before.
A batch is a group of card transactions submitted together for settlement, usually once per day. The batch section of a statement lists each batch date, its total sales, refunds and the net amount deposited. Matching batch totals to bank deposits is one of the simplest ways to confirm that every sale you made was paid out.
The card brand summary splits your volume and fees by network, such as Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover. It helps you see which cards your customers use most and which brands cost more to accept. Rates differ by network and card type, so a shift in your customers’ card mix can change your total fees.
It is a monthly charge some processors add when a merchant has not completed its PCI DSS validation. Helcim's statement guide notes that this non-compliance fee can run $20 to $100 per month. Completing the required validation usually removes it. Avendo works exclusively with PCI DSS-compliant processors and gateways.
The markup is the processor's own cut, charged on top of the wholesale interchange and network fees. Helcim's guide to reading merchant statements notes it is usually shown as a percentage, for example 0.30%. Separating markup from interchange is the clearest way to see what you pay the processor itself, as opposed to card networks and banks.
In QuickBooks Online, the usual approach is to open Reports, choose a sales or transaction report, then customize it to filter or group results by payment method. Menu and report names change between versions, so confirm the current steps in the QuickBooks help center. Then compare that report with your processor statement to reconcile card sales.
Credit card processing typically costs a percentage of each sale, sometimes plus fixed fees. IntelliPay's 2026 guide estimates roughly 1.7% to 2.2% for card-present sales and roughly 2.0% to 2.8% for card-not-present sales such as online orders. Beast Insights reports an average Visa and Mastercard credit rate of 2.36% in 2025.
Typical rates combine interchange set by the card networks, network assessment fees and the processor markup. For online sales, IntelliPay estimates roughly 2.0% to 2.8% all in. Your actual rate depends on card types, order size, chargeback history and how your account is priced. Your effective rate, total fees divided by total volume, is the number to watch.
The cheapest option is the one with the lowest effective rate for your actual mix of cards and sales, and that can change over time. Advertised rates rarely tell the full story. Avendo routes each transaction in real time to the connected processor offering the best available rate, so a small business is not tied to one processor's pricing on every sale.
Your effective rate is total processing fees divided by total card sales for the same period, shown as a percentage. If you paid $250 in fees on $10,000 of sales, your effective rate is 2.5%. It folds every fee into one number, which makes it the simplest way to compare months or providers. Our cost page includes a calculator for it.
Avendo says it does not bill or charge merchants directly. Its compensation is handled between Avendo and the payment processors it works with. Avendo's homepage does not state a price, so contact Avendo directly to understand how this applies to your business and what your processing costs would look like.
Costs usually rise with card-not-present sales, premium rewards and business cards, higher chargeback rates and international cards. Extra monthly charges, such as PCI non-compliance fees, add to the total. Declines cost money too: BCG reports that payment controls wrongly reject 2% to 5% of legitimate transactions, which means lost sales on top of fees.
IntelliPay's 2026 merchant processing guide describes a 0.05 percent CEDP participation fee on eligible transactions. CEDP generally refers to Visa's Commercial Enhanced Data Program, which relates to business and commercial card transactions. If you see an unfamiliar line like this, check your processor's fee schedule and ask what it covers.
Costs are spread across many fee lines and teams, which makes them hard to act on. BCG's 2026 report found that only 10% of large merchants lowered their payment costs over the past five years, despite heavy investment. Clear reporting is the first step, because you cannot question or reroute a cost you cannot see.
Avendo provides credit card processing for e-commerce businesses. Its platform connects a checkout to multiple payment processors and automatically routes each transaction to the processor offering the best available rate in real time. It also gives merchants clearer pricing and processing reports, so they can see what card acceptance costs.
Avendo's platform looks across the connected payment processors in real time and automatically routes each transaction to the one offering the best available rate. This happens per transaction, not once per contract, so the routing decision can differ from one sale to the next. The merchant keeps a single checkout while the platform handles the choice behind it.
Yes. Avendo works with existing checkout pages, so a merchant does not need to rebuild the checkout customers already use. The platform connects that checkout to multiple processors behind the scenes. To confirm the details for your specific store setup, contact Avendo through the contact page on its main website.
Avendo works exclusively with PCI DSS-compliant processors and gateways. PCI DSS is the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, the security rule set card brands require for handling card data. Merchants still have their own PCI responsibilities, so ask Avendo which validation steps apply to your setup.
Avendo provides merchants with clearer pricing and processing reports as part of its platform. The aim is to make it easier to understand what sales cost to process and how processing is performing, instead of piecing it together from dense processor statements. For a walkthrough of the reports available for your account, contact Avendo.
Avendo provides credit card processing for e-commerce businesses through a platform that sits between your checkout and multiple payment processors. Rather than sending every sale to one processor, it routes each transaction to the connected processor offering the best available rate in real time. Every processor and gateway it works with is PCI DSS compliant.
Yes, PayPal is generally described as a payment service provider, or PSP, because it lets businesses accept payments without opening their own traditional merchant account. A PSP bundles processing, gateway and account services into one product. That convenience usually comes with set pricing from a single provider, which differs from routing transactions across multiple processors.
Avendo serves e-commerce businesses from small businesses through enterprise organizations. Small online businesses come first on this site, because card fees take a noticeable share of thin margins and dense statements are hard to read without a finance team. The same multi-processor routing is available to larger organizations with higher volumes.
The best choice keeps your effective rate low, works with your current checkout and gives you reports you can read. Avendo, which publishes this site, fits small online businesses that want each transaction routed to the best available rate across multiple processors. Our small business guide compares three common setups on the same criteria.
Start with your effective rate, then check contract terms, monthly and PCI fees, payout timing, checkout compatibility and the quality of reporting. Ask for a sample statement before signing. If you sell online, compare card-not-present pricing specifically, since IntelliPay estimates it runs roughly 2.0% to 2.8%, higher than card-present sales.
A customer enters card details on your checkout page, a gateway passes them securely to a processor, the card network and issuing bank approve or decline, and approved funds settle to your bank minus fees. With Avendo, the same checkout connects to multiple processors, and each transaction is routed to the one offering the best available rate.
No. Avendo serves e-commerce businesses ranging from small businesses to enterprise organizations. This site focuses on small businesses because they often have the least time to decode processing statements. Larger organizations with higher volumes can contact Avendo to discuss how routing and reporting apply at their scale.
Avendo describes its service as credit card processing for e-commerce businesses, built around connecting an online checkout to multiple processors. If you also take in-person payments, contact Avendo and ask whether and how those sales fit your setup before assuming they are covered. Bring a recent statement so the conversation can start from your real numbers.
For many online merchants, routing gives more pricing flexibility, because each transaction can go to the processor offering the best available rate instead of one fixed contract. A single processor can be simpler when volume is very low or a business values one vendor relationship above all. Our comparison page sets both side by side on the same criteria.
Yes, it can. Beast Insights, citing Spreedly's 2023 data, reports decline rates ranging from 2.8% to 98% across 106 US-dollar gateways. The same source cites Primer data showing that an instant retry on a different processor recovers about 20% of declines, versus 2% on the same merchant account.
Credit card processing companies differ in pricing model, contract terms, supported checkouts, payout speed, security and reporting. Some are processors, some are gateways, and some bundle both as payment service providers. Avendo works differently again: it connects one checkout to multiple PCI DSS-compliant processors and routes each sale to the best available rate.
Flat-rate pricing charges one percentage, sometimes plus a fixed fee, on every sale regardless of card type. Interchange-plus passes through the actual interchange and network fees and adds a stated processor markup, such as the 0.30% example in Helcim's statement guide. Flat rates are easier to predict; interchange-plus is easier to audit line by line.
You can, and many small businesses start that way by copying totals from each statement. It works for one processor and a few fee lines, but it becomes slow and error-prone as fees, refunds and chargebacks pile up. Platform reports, like the clearer pricing and processing reports Avendo provides, keep the numbers in one place.
Contact Avendo through the contact page on its main website at avendo.tech. Be ready to describe your store, your current checkout, your monthly card volume and your current processor. Having a recent merchant statement on hand makes it easier to discuss your current costs and how multi-processor routing could apply to your sales.
Gather your last three monthly merchant statements, your total card volume and transaction count, your average order value, your current effective rate, and any contract terms such as cancellation fees. These numbers let you compare options on real data rather than advertised rates, and they make any conversation with a provider faster and more specific.
Negative amounts usually reflect money taken back from your account, such as a refund, a chargeback or an adjustment. Helcim's statement guide notes that one such line commonly appears as a negative transaction amount, often between $15 and $40. Check the description and date, then match it to the original sale in your own records.
Start with the batch section of your statement and compare each batch's net amount with the matching bank deposit. Differences usually come from fees deducted daily, refunds, chargebacks, reserves or a deposit landing on a later business day. If a gap remains after that, ask your processor for a transaction-level report for the dates involved.
Common causes include more card-not-present or premium card sales, a higher share of refunds or chargebacks, a new monthly or compliance fee, or a rate change in your agreement. Compare the fee breakdown and card brand summary with last month line by line. If the cause is unclear, ask your provider in writing to explain each changed line.
Ask Avendo directly through its contact page.