Every fee on your restaurant statement, named, usually within 4 hours
Send one recent statement. A human reads it line by line for the things that specifically hit a restaurant floor — the Visa program each sale actually landed in, tip-adjustment timing, and whether delivery-app commissions are being confused with your card processing cost — and gets it back to you, usually within 4 hours, not the twenty-four everyone else quotes.
- Which Visa program each in-person, phone and online sale actually landed in
- Tip-adjustment timing checked against the current authorise-to-settle rule
- Delivery-app commissions separated from your own merchant account fees
- PCI and statement fees identified line by line
- The dollar difference per month and per year
- Yours to keep whether you switch or not
Step 1 of 4 · takes about 40 seconds
The four places a restaurant statement leaks money
1. CPS/Restaurant vs a downgrade
Visa prices the identical debit card very differently depending on how the sale was submitted. In Visa's April 18, 2026 US interchange schedule, a card-present sale that closes its batch on time and qualifies for CPS/Restaurant, Debit reimburses at 1.19% + $0.10. The same card, keyed in at the counter or submitted late, can fall to CPS/Retail Key Entry or CPS/Card Not Present at 1.65% + $0.15, and a sale that misses qualification entirely can land on the Standard Interchange Reimbursement Fee at 1.90% + $0.25. Those are the rates banks pay each other, not your bill directly — your provider's merchant discount sits on top — but the spread between the best and worst row is the single biggest controllable number on the statement, and it is invisible unless someone checks which program each batch actually cleared into.
We read the batch settlement detail, not just the summary page, and flag any pattern of late closes, keyed entries or missing data fields that is quietly walking sales down that ladder.
2. Tip-adjustment timing
If your terminal authorises the bill and the tip is added after the guest leaves, the gap between what was authorised and what settled is governed by Visa's Table 7-10 — and that table changed in February 2026. Effective 21 February 2026 in the US, MCC 5811 (Caterers), 5812 (Eating Places and Restaurants) and 5814 (Fast Food) are permitted a difference of up to 30% between the authorised and settled amount; drinking places under MCC 5813 stay at up to 20%. There is one case with zero tolerance: after a partial authorisation, the clearing amount and the authorisation amount must match exactly — the exact situation a busy line is most likely to get wrong when a partially approved card comes back with the tip line still open. We check your tip-adjustment pattern against the current tolerance for your MCC, not last year's rule.
3. Delivery-app commissions, kept separate from your processing cost
DoorDash's own merchant pricing page states three commission tiers on delivery orders — 15% (Basic), 25% (Plus) or 30% (Premier) — with pickup orders at 6% on every plan, no monthly fee and no contract. That commission is charged by the platform on the payment the diner made to the platform; your merchant account never touches it, and it does not appear as a card-processing line on your statement. Uber Eats and Grubhub do not publish a single commission number the way DoorDash does — theirs is quoted per merchant at onboarding — so we compare your actual agreement against what came out of your payouts rather than against a public rate card for those two. Where this bites is when an operator blames "processing fees" for a margin squeeze that is actually a delivery-app tier; separating the two is half of what this analysis is for.
4. PCI and statement fees
The PCI Security Standards Council publishes merchant guidance and self-assessment questionnaires, and which one applies depends on how you take cards — a dining room on validated point-to-point encrypted terminals is a different scope from a kitchen PC running the online ordering site. A non-compliance fee, a PCI validation fee and a flat monthly statement or "regulatory" fee are common lines that have nothing to do with interchange and everything to do with your provider's own price list. We name each one and what it is actually for.
How the fee lines usually break down on a typical statement
Illustrative example only. The business, sales figures and fee lines below are a hypothetical round-number scenario built to show how the arithmetic works. They are not a real client's statement, they are not typical or average costs, and they do not predict what any restaurant would pay. Your own result depends entirely on your card mix, ticket size and current agreement — which is exactly what a statement analysis reads for.
Picture a full-service restaurant with $60,000 in monthly card sales across 1,250 in-person, phone and online transactions (a $48 average ticket, in line with typical full-service tickets).
| Statement line (illustrative) | What it represents | Hypothetical amount |
|---|---|---|
| Card-present sales, qualified | Batch closed on time, CPS/Restaurant-eligible | $48,000 of volume |
| Card-present sales, downgraded | Keyed entries and late batches, fell to a lower program | $7,000 of volume |
| Phone / online sales | Card-not-present program | $5,000 of volume |
| Percentage discount fee (assumed, hypothetical) | Blended rate applied to total volume | $1,560 |
| Per-item fee | 1,250 transactions × $0.15 (assumed) | $188 |
| PCI non-compliance / statement fee | Flat monthly line unrelated to interchange | $35 |
| Total fees (illustrative) | $1,783 | |
| Effective rate (illustrative) | Total fees ÷ total volume | 2.97% |
The point of the illustration is not the dollar figures — change the assumed blended rate or the downgrade share and the total moves — it is the shape: three different volume buckets, each priced on a different program, plus a flat fee that has nothing to do with any of them. That is what a statement analysis separates out on your real numbers.
Restaurant processing, in depth
Restaurant payment processing
The full industry guide: POS vs processing, downgrades, tips, delivery apps, equipment and switching.
Best POS for restaurants (2026)
How the leading restaurant POS platforms compare on published pricing and features.
Best processing for restaurants (2026)
How providers serving restaurants price card processing, compared on what they publish.
Toast vs Square
Two of the most-searched restaurant POS platforms, compared feature by feature.
Tip adjustment in restaurants
The authorise-to-settle rules that apply, and where they changed this year.
2026 Card Fee Report (US)
The current published US card-fee landscape for restaurants and retail in one report.
Restaurant statement analysis questions
Restaurants run three things most retailers do not: tip adjustments after authorisation, card-not-present phone and online orders alongside card-present tables, and delivery-app volume that never touches your merchant account at all. Each of those changes which Visa program a sale should land in, so a restaurant statement needs a reader who checks for all three, not just the headline rate.
We will tell you what we can verify. DoorDash publishes its commission tiers (Basic, Plus, Premier) and a 6% pickup fee on its own merchant pricing page, so we check your plan against that. Uber Eats and Grubhub do not publish a single public commission rate — theirs is quoted per merchant at sign-up — so for those two we can only compare what your agreement says against what your statement actually deducted, not against a public rate card.
No. The diner pays the platform, the platform deposits your net payout, and that commission is priced and disclosed by the platform, not your processor. Your merchant statement only carries the card fees on payments that actually settled through your own merchant account — dine-in, phone orders, and any online ordering you run yourself outside the apps.
Yes. You keep the analysis whether or not you switch. Some operators take it back to their current provider and negotiate — that is a legitimate outcome and we still consider the work well spent.
Usually within 4 hours. Many come back the same day.
Sources
- Visa – Visa USA Interchange Reimbursement Fees (18 April 2026) (checked 2026-09-17)
- Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules (18 April 2026) (checked 2026-09-17)
- US Department of Labor, Fact Sheet #15: Tipped Employees Under the FLSA (checked 2026-09-17)
- PCI Security Standards Council – Merchants (checked 2026-09-17)
- DoorDash for Merchants – Pricing (accessed 18 Sep 2026)
About the rate figures on this page: Visa is the only card network that publishes a public US merchant interchange schedule, so the rates named above are Visa-only. Mastercard, American Express and Discover do not publish an equivalent US merchant schedule, and their rates are neither shown nor implied here. This is general information about published card network rules, not legal or tax advice.