Electronic payment processing fees
Starting January 1, 2024, we pass through electronic payment processing fees to clubs for credit card charges related to club activity/event entries, 'extras' (e.g., food, camping), membership dues, merchandise, and all other purposes.
To keep things simple, we don't show these electronic payment processing fees to entrants or buyers. Instead, they only affect the final payments we make to clubs.
Note that we say "Electronic payment processing fees" instead of "Credit card processing fees" because we intend to support other kinds of electronic payments in the future (e.g., direct payment from checking accounts via ACH/EFT).
How it works
When it's time for us to pay a club for their activity, membership dues, merchandise sold, and the like, we do the following:
Add up the associated electronic payments (credit card charges)
Multiply the total by 4%
Round up to the nearest dollar
Deduct this amount from the club's final proceeds payment
Example
Let's look at an example Ponderosa Pointing Dog Club (PPDC) hunt test.
Here are the charges:
Entrant | Entry fees | Payment type |
Hoss Cartwright | $60 | Credit card |
Festus Haggin | $60 | Credit card |
Kitty Russell | $120 | Check |
When the secretary finalizes the hunt test:
We add up all the credit card charges to get $120.
We will then calculate 4% * $120 to get $4.80
Next we round up to the nearest dollar to get $5.
The PPDC's final proceeds check will be reduced by $5 to cover credit card processing fees.
Recommendation
If you expect a large number of payers to use a credit card, you may want to increase your entry/extra fees, membership dues, merchandise prices, and the like to account for the credit card processing fees (like almost every physical and online store in the country has done for many years).