Why Trailblaze charges a flat fee instead of taking a cut of your savings

There are two common ways to pay someone to help reduce credit card processing costs.

One is contingency pricing: the consultant keeps a percentage of the savings they identify.

Trailblaze takes a different approach. The initial review is free. If there is enough opportunity to justify ongoing help and monitoring, the cost is $49 per merchant account per month.

There is a simple reason for that.

The amount you have been overcharged has very little to do with how much work it will take to fix it.

Bigger savings do not always mean more work

Every processing account is different.

The work involved depends on your processor, pricing model, contract, current markup, fees, transaction mix, and how willing your processor is to negotiate.

Sometimes the biggest savings opportunities are actually the easiest to fix.

Consider a merchant that has been overpaying by thousands of dollars every month for years. The pricing may be so far outside the market that there is not much for the processor to defend.

The conversation can be surprisingly simple:

Your pricing is too high. Here is where it is too high. We need it reduced.

That could produce thousands of dollars in monthly savings without months of negotiation.

Now consider another merchant that is only $200 per month above where its pricing should be.

That processor may fight much harder to protect the remaining margin. Getting that merchant from $200 in unnecessary costs to $100 could require multiple conversations, different departments, escalation, and continued follow-up.

The smaller savings opportunity can require more work than the larger one.

So why should the first merchant pay more?

That is the problem I have with percentage-of-savings pricing.

If one business has been overcharged by $3,000 per month and another has been overcharged by $200, I do not believe the first business should automatically owe a consultant dramatically more.

The size of the overcharge was created by the merchant’s processing arrangement. It was not created by the consultant.

Trailblaze does not need a percentage of that money to make fixing it worthwhile.

I would rather charge a predictable amount for the work and let the merchant keep the savings.

The goal is not just finding one big win

There is another reason Trailblaze uses a flat monthly model.

Processing pricing does not stay still.

Rates change. New fees appear. Existing fees increase. Pricing structures change. Businesses add locations, software, and merchant accounts. A competitive deal today can become an expensive one several years from now if nobody is paying attention.

That is how businesses can end up dramatically overpaying in the first place.

Trailblaze is designed to prevent that.

For $49 per merchant account per month, I review the processing relationship, help push back when something is negotiable, and continue monitoring the account.

If something changes six months from now, we look at it.

If a new fee appears next year, we question it.

If the processor raises pricing, we determine whether it is legitimate, unavoidable, or worth negotiating.

And if your pricing is already competitive, I will tell you that too.

Every business deserves the same review

A business processing $50,000 per month deserves to know whether its pricing is fair.

So does a business processing $500,000.

One might have $100 per month available to save. The other might have $5,000.

The work required to uncover and fix those problems will not necessarily correspond to the size of the savings.

That is why Trailblaze does not price the service based on how much money your processor was able to charge you before someone took a closer look.

The first review is free.

If ongoing monitoring makes financial sense, it is $49 per merchant account per month, cancel anytime.

If I cannot identify enough value to justify that cost, you should not pay me.

The objective is simple: fair processing costs today, and someone watching to make sure they stay fair tomorrow.

Send a statement

The first step is still free. Send one recent monthly statement. No required processor switch. No POS or equipment change.