While eventually FeeFighters will allow small businesses to shop for many kinds of financial services, we are starting during our beta period with credit card processing. One reason is that transaction processing is often the financial service with which small businesses are least satisfied. There are some very dirty practices in that industry and we at FeeFighters are making it our mission to create technology that enables small businesses to get a fair shake by creating reverse auctions where financial services providers bid for your business.

A recent article entitled Run From Mean Streets to Clean Streets in The Green Sheet, the trade magazine for salespeople of transaction processing services, highlights some of these dirty practices. Here are some excerpts:

“Some companies in our industry mislead merchants’ business and line the pockets of the processors…There are MLSs (salespeople) who do not disclose the fact that the company they represent charges cancellation fees…falsifying contracts. Never, ever fill in the blank spaces of a contract to your advantage after a customer has signed it.”

It is shocking that such practices, while not ubiquitous, are widespread in the credit card processing industry. FeeFighters does not allow participating service providers to charge cancellation fees, we also have designed our auctions with rules for keeping service providers honest, which seem to be working so far.