FAQ for new StatementIQ customers

StatementIQ reads merchant processing statements, extracts the pricing and fee signals it can verify, compares them with available peer and rule references, and turns the result into a plain-English payment cost report.

Upload a recent monthly merchant processing statement from the provider that handles your card payments. StatementIQ supports PDF, CSV, and spreadsheet file formats and is designed to analyze detailed processing, fee, and transaction data directly from your statements. For the most accurate and reliable audit, we recommend uploading three recent months within the same review. Analyzing trends across statements provides a more stable view of pricing, recurring fees, processor markups, and operational patterns than relying on a single isolated month.

Yes. A single StatementIQ review can include up to three monthly statements for the same merchant account. Adding multiple statements improves the accuracy of the analysis by helping identify recurring fees, pricing trends, seasonal volume shifts, and consistent savings opportunities across time. Rather than treating each upload as a separate audit, additional statements strengthen and refine the same review, creating a more reliable picture of your true payment processing costs.

If the uploaded file is not a usable merchant processing statement, StatementIQ will either flag the issue immediately or route the submission through a guided manual review process. Files are never silently discarded, and you will not be asked to pay for a report unless there is enough verified statement data to generate a meaningful audit. Our goal is to ensure merchants receive a credible, evidence-based review, not a low-confidence or incomplete analysis.

Before purchasing the full audit, StatementIQ provides a preliminary analysis showing whether enough verified statement data was identified to generate a meaningful review, whether the file requires additional manual review, and a summary of identified potential savings opportunities based on the uploaded statement. The complete evidence-based report, including detailed fee analysis, benchmark comparisons, processor insights, and actionable recommendations, is only unlocked after checkout or when an available audit credit is applied.

No. StatementIQ identifies credible savings opportunities, pricing concerns, and processor negotiation points based on the verified evidence available within your merchant statements. However, actual savings depend on factors such as your processor agreement, pricing structure, transaction mix, business profile, account history, and whether pricing or operational changes are ultimately approved or implemented. The purpose of the audit is to provide merchants with a clearer, evidence-based understanding of their processing costs and stronger leverage for informed pricing discussions and decision-making.

StatementIQ compares key pricing and processing characteristics from your statements, including effective rate, processor markup, fee burden, pass-through cost share, transaction volume, ticket size, and transaction count, against the most relevant peer and industry reference ranges available. Comparisons are only generated when sufficient verified statement evidence exists to support a responsible and meaningful benchmark. This helps ensure the analysis remains credible, evidence-based, and grounded in comparable merchant profiles rather than broad or misleading averages.

Merchant processing statements are often incomplete, inconsistent, or limited in the level of pricing detail they provide. In some cases, the statement may contain signals that strongly suggest potential savings opportunities, pricing issues, or operational inefficiencies, but not enough verified evidence to classify the finding as fully confirmed. When that happens, StatementIQ labels the insight as directional, investigative, or worthy of follow-up rather than presenting it as guaranteed savings. This approach helps keep the audit transparent, responsible, and evidence-based while still surfacing areas that may deserve closer review or processor discussion.

Yes. Merchant processing statements are treated as confidential financial documents and handled using secure upload, storage, and access controls. Your statements are used solely to generate your audit, support quality review workflows, improve statement recognition and parsing accuracy, and maintain your account history over time. StatementIQ does not sell merchant statements or expose your raw statement data to other merchants. Benchmarking and peer analysis are designed to protect merchant confidentiality and are based on aggregated, normalized reference patterns rather than shared documents.

Most merchant statements are processed automatically through secure extraction and analysis systems. If a file is scanned, incomplete, corrupted, or uses an unfamiliar format, a limited number of authorized review personnel may access the uploaded statement and extracted evidence solely for quality assurance, validation, or troubleshooting purposes. Access is restricted to approved operational reviewers involved in maintaining audit accuracy and release decisions. Merchant statements are treated as confidential financial records and are never exposed publicly or shared with other merchants.

No. Payment processing and checkout are handled securely through approved third-party providers such as Stripe. StatementIQ does not store raw payment card numbers, full banking credentials, or sensitive payment authentication data on its systems. StatementIQ only maintains the minimum billing and account records necessary to manage purchases, subscription status, audit credits, and report access history.

Yes. Merchants may contact support to request deletion or removal of uploaded statements and related account data. StatementIQ will review the request and process available removal options in accordance with applicable operational, security, and legal requirements. Certain records, such as audit history, billing transactions, fraud prevention logs, security records, or compliance-related operational data, may need to be retained for a limited period to support platform integrity, dispute resolution, or regulatory obligations.

If a statement cannot be fully processed automatically, due to scan quality, formatting issues, missing pages, or an unsupported layout, the upload is preserved and routed into a secure review workflow rather than being discarded or lost. You may receive a review or status link showing whether OCR processing, parser validation, or manual review is pending, completed, or requires additional attention. This helps ensure merchants maintain visibility into the review process and that potentially usable statements still receive a fair evaluation whenever possible.

OCR, or Optical Character Recognition, is a technology that converts scanned documents and image-based statements into machine-readable text. StatementIQ uses OCR when a merchant statement contains little or no extractable text, such as scanned PDFs, photos, or image-heavy documents. Once the text is reconstructed, StatementIQ reruns fee extraction, evidence detection, and audit analysis against the OCR output to identify pricing details, processing fees, and other usable statement information.

OCR accuracy depends heavily on the quality and structure of the uploaded statement. Blurry scans, rotated or tilted pages, low contrast, handwritten notes, missing or cropped sections, image compression, and highly customized statement layouts can all interfere with reliable text extraction and fee detection. If the extracted information is incomplete or unreliable, StatementIQ may place the audit into manual review, request a clearer upload, or reject the statement if there is not enough verified evidence to produce a trustworthy analysis.

General-purpose AI tools can often summarize a merchant statement, but they are not designed to operate as a structured, repeatable payment-cost audit system. StatementIQ is purpose-built for merchant processing analysis, combining statement extraction, fee normalization, peer benchmarking, processor rule logic, review workflows, and multi-month tracking into a dedicated audit platform. Rather than generating a one-time summary, StatementIQ creates a durable, evidence-based review tied to your workspace. The platform preserves extracted fee evidence, tracks review and confidence status, compares pricing against relevant merchant benchmarks, applies processor and card-network pricing knowledge, and supports ongoing month-to-month analysis over time. The result is a more transparent, verifiable, and operationally useful payment-cost review, designed for real processor negotiations and long-term cost management, not just a conversational summary.

Yes, but in a controlled and privacy-conscious way. StatementIQ may use statement patterns, extracted benchmark signals, parser improvements, and accepted review outcomes to improve future analysis quality, coverage, and accuracy. The goal is to make the platform better at recognizing statement formats, identifying fee patterns, applying audit rules, and strengthening peer comparisons without exposing one merchant's private statement, raw data, or confidential business information to another merchant.

Yes. When relevant, StatementIQ incorporates applicable card-network rules, interchange guidance, processor practices, and payment-industry mandate knowledge into the review process. These references may help identify pricing concerns, downgrade exposure, surcharge compliance issues, pass-through inconsistencies, or processor questions worth investigating further. However, these signals are used as evidence-based audit guidance, not as unsupported claims of guaranteed savings or processor noncompliance. The goal is to provide merchants with more informed, credible follow-up questions grounded in observable statement evidence and known industry practices.