Merchant statement audit
Our merchant statement audit breaks down your card processing costs, separates true pass-through expenses from negotiable markups and hidden fees, and gives you clear, actionable questions to take back to your processor.
StatementIQ starts with the merchant statement itself. Every insight is tied back to extracted statement data, validated fee analysis, peer benchmarks across similar businesses, and processor-specific questions you can use to challenge rates, fees, and contract terms with confidence.
The audit identifies realistic savings opportunities by analyzing your effective rate, processor markup, fixed fees, transaction mix, and billing patterns against peer benchmarks and industry norms. The goal is not to flag every fee; it is to isolate the charges and pricing structures most likely to impact your bottom line.
Your processing statements are treated as sensitive financial documents and handled using secure upload and storage protocols. Files are encrypted in transit and protected throughout the review process. If a statement is scanned, incomplete, or uses an unfamiliar format, it is routed through a guided review workflow, not discarded or lost.
What the audit reviews
StatementIQ begins with the statement itself, extracting and validating the underlying fee, pricing, and transaction information before generating findings. Confirmed values are separated from directional indicators and peer-based signals, helping ensure the analysis is accurate, defensible, and useful without overstating what a single statement can prove.
Payment processing costs are often buried across dozens of line items: processor markups, interchange and card-network pass-through fees, transaction charges, gateway costs, PCI and compliance fees, monthly service fees, assessments, and periodic adjustments.
As a result, it can be extremely difficult to understand what you are truly paying, what is negotiable, and whether your pricing is competitive.
StatementIQ is designed to make that review repeatable. The report explains what was found, what is merely directional, and which processor-controlled charges or operational patterns deserve follow-up.
The StatementIQ audit is designed for businesses that accept credit card payments and want a clearer, evidence-based understanding of what they are actually paying in processing costs.
It is especially valuable before renegotiating rates, evaluating a new processor or POS platform, reviewing unexplained fee increases, or validating whether current pricing remains competitive.
Evidence trail
The value of StatementIQ comes from connecting the underlying merchant statement to the extracted fees, validated findings, peer benchmarks, review status, and processor-specific follow-up questions in a single audit trail. This creates an analysis that is transparent, verifiable, and repeatable over time, making it easier to track changes month to month, identify pricing trends, and enter processor negotiations with credible, evidence-backed insight instead of assumptions.
Reading path
Payment processing costs rarely come down to a single fee. Understanding what you are paying, and what you can realistically improve, often requires connecting statement evidence, processor pricing structures, operational patterns, and industry benchmarks. These guides are designed to help merchants move from raw statement data to informed, actionable questions.
Learn how merchant statements reveal effective rate, fee composition, transaction quality, and pricing behavior, helping identify where processor costs may be above market or operationally avoidable.
Merchant processing fee auditUnderstand how a fee audit separates interchange and card-network pass-through expenses from processor-controlled markup, recurring monthly charges, gateway fees, and other negotiable costs.
How to read a merchant statementLearn how to read a merchant processing statement by identifying volume, fees, effective rate, pass-through cost, markup, recurring charges, and processor questions.
A merchant statement audit is a detailed review of the monthly processing statement issued by the company that handles your credit and debit card payments. The purpose of the audit is to determine what you are truly paying in processing costs, separate unavoidable card-network and issuing-bank pass-through fees from processor markup and service charges, and identify pricing structures, recurring fees, or operational patterns that may be negotiable or unnecessarily increasing cost.
Upload a recent monthly merchant processing statement from the provider that handles your card payments, such as Toast, Fiserv, CardPointe, Worldpay, Stripe, Square, or your bank's merchant services provider. PDF, CSV, and XLSX files are supported. For the most complete and accurate analysis, we recommend uploading a full monthly statement that includes processing fees, transaction summaries, and fee detail pages.
Yes. A single audit can include up to three monthly statements for the same merchant account. Reviewing multiple months helps identify recurring pricing patterns, fee increases, seasonal volume changes, and consistent savings opportunities, making it easier to distinguish long-term trends from one-time anomalies or temporary adjustments.
No. The audit identifies likely savings opportunities and highlights processor fees, pricing structures, and billing patterns that may deserve review. Actual savings depend on your processor agreement, transaction mix, business type, and whether pricing or operational changes are implemented. The goal is to give you a clearer, evidence-based understanding of your processing costs and stronger information for negotiating and decision-making.
Upload one recent monthly statement to see whether StatementIQ can produce a preliminary savings signal.