Thousand Oaks, CA · merchant services since 2016
Your processing statement is negotiable.
MONA Payment Solutions is a woman and minority owned merchant services agency. Send one statement. You get back the line that is costing you the money, and what it would look like on a different program.
United States and Canada · a dedicated representative on every account
Two statements they have published
Skyline Expoconn · monthly processing fees
$3,713$91.42
Effective rate 0.08% · $43,462 saved in the first year
NASA Services · effective card rate
4.07%2.61%
ACH settlement moved from 5 to 7 days down to 2 to 3
Both figures are MONA's own, published on their client case studies. Your own numbers depend on your card mix and your volume.
35 yrs
in payments before MONA was founded
2016
the year Cristina started the company
98%
largest fee reduction they have published
10 / 10
the rating STS Diesel gave them
What a statement hides
Nobody reads the bill they are already paying.
A merchant statement is written to be filed, not read. The cost is rarely in the headline rate. It is in three places that most providers never point out, because pointing them out costs the provider money.
The card your customer chose
Business and corporate cards are expensive to accept, often between 2.65% and 2.96%. If your customers are other businesses, that is most of your volume, and the headline rate you were quoted never applied to it.
The data you never sent
A typical merchant account processes at Level 1: card number, expiry, billing address. The card brands price risk on information. Send less and you pay the tier that assumes the worst.
The fee nobody assigned
Someone pays the processing cost on every sale. By default it is you, silently, on every transaction, forever. That is a default, not a law, and it can be changed.
Fix one · the data
So we start with the cheapest fix, which is information.
Level 2 and Level 3 processing means capturing a few more fields at the point of sale than Level 1 does. Capture them and the same transaction qualifies for a lower tier. MONA sets the capture to run automatically once it is configured, so nobody has to remember to do it.
- Corporate and business cards, typically 2.65% to 2.96% at Level 1
- The same cards, 1.85% to 2.06% once the extra fields are captured
- Configured once, executed automatically at the point of sale
- Worth most if you sell to businesses or to government agencies
The three tiers, as the card brands price them
The exact fields vary by card brand. The direction never does: more data captured, lower rate paid.
Fix two · the fee itself
Then we decide who carries the fee.
Two programs, and they are not the same thing. RewardPay adds a compliant surcharge to credit card transactions, which MONA describes as saving up to 90% in credit card fees. Consumer Choice presents two prices at checkout, a cash price and a card price, and lets the customer pick.
RewardPay surcharging
- Up to 90% saved in credit card fees
- Free to add, and fully compliant where surcharging is permitted
- Debit and gift cards are never surcharged
Consumer Choice
- Two prices at checkout, the customer chooses
- Next day funding, settled at end of business day
- No contract
One sale, three programs
And you can see it on a single $100 sale.
This is the same corporate card, the same hundred dollars, run three ways. The percentages are the ones MONA publishes on its own service pages. Nothing here is an industry average.
As most accounts run today
Level 1 processing
The rate MONA quotes at the top of the corporate card range, before anything is changed.
Fix one, data only
Level 2 and 3 processing
Same sale, same customer, same card. The only difference is the fields captured at the point of sale.
Fix two, the fee moves
Consumer Choice
The customer sees a cash price and a card price and picks one. Either way the processing fee is no longer yours.
Eighty cents on a hundred dollar sale sounds small. Skyline Expoconn was absorbing $3,713 of processing every month before MONA looked at it, and $91.42 after. The gap is the same arithmetic run across a year of volume.
In their words
Ask the merchants who moved.
Every one of these is on MONA's own testimonials and case study pages, with the name attached.
The one word I would use to describe this experience would be successful. We were able to save money and work with a company that values communication and provides exemplary service.
L. Hively · STS Diesel
Just a note of thanks for helping us transform our payment process. I put a lot of pressure on the Mona team to make this conversion quickly and there were some challenges. Every day it seems to get better.
Larry Zollo · Skyline Expoconn
We switched to MONA Solutions some time ago and have had exceptional, personalized service since. Cristina and Shelby are always available to us via phone or email and I will continue to recommend their services to our business associates.
Russ Pierce · Office Manager
Credit card processing has always been cumbersome and MONA and DSI take the work out of the equation. We save almost 40 hours a month now in time efficiencies.
T. La Cost · Arkansas Valley Diesel Service, Inc.
Send one statement. Keep the analysis either way.
A complimentary review of your current processing, with product recommendations and the specific places you are overpaying. If the answer is that your current setup is already the right one, that is what it will say.
Call or email and a real person answers
Before you call
Still deciding?
What does the complimentary analysis actually involve?
You send one recent processing statement. MONA reads it line by line and comes back with where the cost is sitting, which of the programs below would move it, and what the numbers would look like on your own volume. There is no charge and no obligation at the end of it.
Is surcharging legal?
Yes, where it is permitted. A federal law allows merchants to add a surcharge to credit card transactions to offset the merchant fees, and MONA's RewardPay program is built to stay compliant with the applicable rules and with the card brand requirements from Visa and Mastercard. Debit and gift card transactions are never surcharged.
Do I have to change my software?
Usually not. MONA is an authorized reseller for Paya, Authorize.net, NMI, Accept.Blue and CenPOS, integrates with DSI Solutions for heavy duty trucking dealers, and works with carts including Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, 3dcart, Lemonstand and CubeCart. Lane Seven Apparel kept their existing ERP and CRM through the whole switch.
Am I locked into a contract?
No. The Consumer Choice program carries no contract, and all accounts are settled at the end of the business day so funds arrive the next day.
Who will I actually be dealing with?
Each client gets a dedicated representative from the team. MONA is a boutique agency in Ventura County, founded in 2016 by Cristina Alvarez Barrett, and clients name the people who answer the phone in their reviews.