Archives: FAQs

Is there a closure fee?

Dharma charges a $49.00 account closure fee on the date you request your account to be closed.  Why? Dharma actually must maintain your account on-file for 6 months after you close your account just in case you should experience a customer dispute or chargeback from a past customer. Our cost [...]

What is an ACH reject fee?

An ACH Reject Fee is assessed when Dharma attempts to pull fees out of your bank account, but there aren’t enough funds in the account. Think of an ACH Reject Fee like an “overdraft” fee in your bank account. Dharma’s fees are always billed the month following processing. Fees are always withdrawn [...]

What is a retrieval fee?

A retrieval occurs when your customer’s bank requests additional sales information from our processing bank. Typically, a retrieval will precede a chargeback, since a retrieval request often indicates that a customer is concerned about a specific charge on their account. Dharma’s retrieval fee is $5 per retrieval. Most merchants will [...]

What is a batch fee?

Dharma does not have a batch fee. With other firms, batch fees are assessed on every day that transactions are sent in for processing, regardless of how many transactions are processed. Batch fees are paid if you process one transaction or one hundred. So, if your business is open every day, [...]

What are card brand (NABU, assessment) fees?

What are these strange and mysterious fees? Card Brand Fees (also known as Card Association Fees) are the fees that are actually paid back to Visa/Mastercard/Discover. These are also commonly referred to as NABU fees (Network Access and Brand Usage fees). Most merchants don’t realize that the vast majority of the fees [...]

What is the FANF fee?

FANF stands for Fixed Acquirer Network Fee. This fee is assessed directly by Visa, and is assessed based on how much volume your account processes per month. Dharma does not mark this fee up! In-person (Card-Present) accounts have lower FANF fees than Online (Card-Not-Present) accounts. The FANF will not apply to [...]

1099-K Questions

What's a 1099 Form? Starting in 2011, the IRS began mandating that all Merchant Service Providers, like Dharma, report income back to the IRS on an annual basis. Per federal law, we are required to report this information to the IRS. 1099-K forms will include the gross processing figures for [...]

How much do international sales cost?

International sales work the same way as domestic sales, in that each international card will still have an underlying interchange-rate. The only difference when processing an international sale is that as the merchant, you’ll be subject to additional fees that are assessed directly by the card associations, to help cover [...]

What is a Reserve?

A reserve is a risk-mitigation tool that helps processors and merchants ensure that there funds available to cover unforeseen losses. When accepting credit cards, there are certain risk factors that increase a merchant’s probability to incur disputes/chargebacks, fraud, or business closure. For these scenarios, it’s helpful for the Merchant Service [...]