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- Interchange Plans are typically promoted as the most cost-effective, but it can be difficult to determine your average rates. There are dozens if not hundreds of different rates not just for the major card brands like American Express or Mastercard, but also significant variety in rates between product lines and issuing banks. For example, instead of "the Mastercard rate" or even "The Capital One Mastercard rate," there might be one rate for "Capital One Professional" and another rate for "Capital One Quicksilver Rewards." Under an interchange plan, the merchant services provider charges a fixed percentage over and above the applicable rate set by the issuing bank for the particular card used in the transaction. The advantage is that you know your merchant service provider is only taking .05% of each transaction; the disadvantage is that you have no way of knowing what rates the issuing banks are charging for any particular card until after the transaction has settled. Not only are there hundreds of interchange rates, but they can and do change all the time. Nevertheless, most merchant services providers will recommend interchange plans for leagues that do not expect corporate, government, or international credit cards to be used very often.
- Tiered plans divide all cards into a much smaller number of categories, typically qualified and unqualified transactions, where qualified transactions might consist of any card that is not a government or international credit card; these receive a preferable rate to unqualified transactions. All transactions will be billed at one rate or the other, regardless of the rate charged by the issuing bank. This seems (to us, anyway) more manageable, but at the cost of what might be higher rates across the board.
How do refunds work?
(May 2020 Update): Please note that Authorize.net has permanently suspended the Expanded Credit Capability program due to increased fraud stemming from the pandemic. If your account currently has ECC capability, you should expect that it will be suspended. If it does not, you will not be able to receive it. We are working with Paysafe and Authorize.net to find a new solution, but at this time none is forthcoming and the expectation should be that any refund outside of 120 days must be done via paper check.
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When a transaction is first submitted, it goes into an "unsettled" batch. While e-commerce transactions are approved or rejected right away, approved transactions only "settle" once a day. The exact time that they settle is determined by your merchant services provider.
Prior to a transaction settling, it may be voided, and no transaction fees should be incurred. After it has settled, without special arrangements, a transaction may be refunded within 120 days. This is a very common restriction in the credit card industry as the payment processors do not want to keep card numbers on file for longer than that. This restriction is not put in place or enforced by inLeague. The only way around it (if Authorize.net is your payment gateway) is was to apply for Expanded Credit Capabilities ("ECC") which allow arbitrary (or "unlinked") refunds to be issued against any card. inLeague will still constrain refunds such that they can only be issued against existing transactions.
Refunds and Expired / Canceled Cards
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