Home › Moneris merchant statement
How to Read Your Moneris Merchant Statement
Moneris is one of the largest processors in Canada, so its statements land on a lot of desks — and get filed unread by most of them. Here is how to work through one and find the numbers that matter.
Work through it in this order
- Total card volume for the month. The gross value of card transactions processed — not what was deposited to your bank, which is net of fees and any adjustments.
- Total fees for the month. Add every charge, not just the discount rate. This is the figure most merchants underestimate, because the charges are spread across several sections.
- Divide fees by volume. That is your effective rate — the number to compare against any competing quote.
- Split the fees into wholesale versus markup. Interchange and network assessments are fixed for everyone; the rest is your processor’s. Only the second part is negotiable.
- Read the recurring charges line by line. Monthly fees, PCI or compliance charges, terminal rental, gateway fees and minimums are individually small and collectively significant.
What to look for, and why
- Transactions grouped into several rate categories. Normal — interchange varies by card type and how the card was presented. Worth checking that a large share has not drifted into the more expensive categories, which can indicate how you are accepting cards rather than how you are priced.
- Fixed monthly charges. Judge these as a percentage of your volume, not in dollars. A $40 monthly charge is trivial at $200,000 of volume and punitive at $6,000.
- Compliance and non-compliance fees. These are often avoidable by completing an annual self-assessment that many merchants do not realise is outstanding.
- Equipment rental. Compare the annual cost against buying the terminal outright. Rental is sometimes the better deal and sometimes decisively not.
- Anything that changed since last month. Fee increases must be disclosed to you under Canada’s Code of Conduct for the Credit and Debit Card Industry, and a change to core pricing can trigger a right to exit without penalty.
Statement layouts change over time and vary by account type and program, so treat the sequence above as the logic to follow rather than a map of specific page numbers. If a charge on your statement is not self-explanatory, that is reason enough to ask about it.
A worked example of the arithmetic
Suppose a month shows $31,000 in card volume and, once every charge is added up, $742.50 in total fees. The effective rate is 742.50 ÷ 31,000 = 2.40%.
Whether 2.40% is reasonable depends entirely on what generated it. Mostly tapped consumer debit and basic credit on large tickets? That is high. Mostly keyed-in corporate cards on $15 average tickets? That may be close to the floor. The percentage means nothing until you know what interchange your own mix actually produced — which is exactly what a statement analysis establishes.
Figures are illustrative arithmetic, not a quoted rate.
Questions
Where do I find my Moneris statement?
Monthly statements are available through the Moneris merchant portal, and may also be mailed or emailed depending on how your account was set up. Download the full PDF rather than the on-screen summary — the fee detail is in the later pages.
Which pages of the statement actually matter?
The deposit or sales summary tells you what you sold. The fee detail pages tell you what you paid, and that is where a review should concentrate. Recurring monthly charges are usually listed separately from per-transaction pricing.
My statement shows several different rates. Why?
Different card types and acceptance methods carry different interchange, so transactions are grouped into categories that each price differently. This is normal — but it is also why a single advertised rate rarely reflects what you end up paying.
Can you review a Moneris statement even though you are not Moneris?
Yes. The analysis is done from the document itself, and it works the same way for any Canadian processor's statement. We do not need access to your Moneris account.
Get your own statement reviewed
Send a recent processing statement and we’ll return a plain-English, line-by-line breakdown of what you’re paying and why — free, with no obligation to switch.