The short answer
An annual fee is a once-yearly charge of roughly $79 to $149 applied to many merchant accounts. It is sometimes labelled as an annual PCI fee, membership fee or account maintenance fee. In every case it is margin — there is no annual service being performed.
Why it is easy to miss
It appears once, often in a month with otherwise normal fees, on a statement most owners scan rather than read. Merchants routinely pay it for five years without noticing it exists.
The check that takes five minutes
Pull twelve consecutive statements and list every fee that appears fewer than twelve times. Annual fees, one-off compliance charges and equipment charges surface immediately.
Key takeaways
- Annual fees hide in the pattern of monthly statements
- Reviewing twelve months at once exposes them
- No service is attached — they are negotiable or avoidable
Want this checked against your own statement?
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