Statement teardown · Dojo
The 3p fee that outweighs the headline rate
A 0.60% debit rate that costs 0.89% once the 3p-per-transaction fee does its work on a £14.62 average basket.
- The business
- a family-run European food store in a northern city
- The document
- Monthly Dojo invoice (30 days)
- Period
- a winter trading month
- Card sales billed
- £39,949.00
- Payments / average
- 2,733 / £14.62
- Fees (ex VAT) / effective rate
- £355.15 / 0.89%
The saving in this document
£2,680 a year below list price
The negotiated rate card in this invoice bills £256.00 in transaction rates where Dojo's published 1.2% blended rate would bill £479.39 on the same volume - £223.39 a month, £2,680 a year, purely from negotiating instead of signing at list. Against the cheapest flat-rate reader (SumUp at 1.69%, £675.14 for this month's volume), the whole invoice saves £320 a month: £3,840 a year.
Where the money went, as billed
Debit cards
2,528 transactions, £36,346.02 at 0.60% = £218.08
Credit cards
186 transactions, £3,408.02 at 1.00% = £34.08
Secure transaction fee
2,817 charges at £0.03 = £84.51 - more than every non-debit rate line combined, and billed on declined attempts too
Business and Amex cards
19 transactions at 1.90% to 1.99% = £3.84
European / international cards
46 transactions surcharged at 0.35% / 1.05% + 13p = £3.64
Hardware and platform
Platform £10.00 + Dojo Go £1.00 = £11.00
What the numbers say
The headline on this invoice is a genuinely sharp rate. 91% of the month's card volume is debit, billed at 0.60% - half of Dojo's published 1.2% and a rate you only get by negotiating. If this store judged its deal by the rate table alone, it would file the invoice and move on.
The line that deserves the attention is the quiet one: a secure transaction fee of 3p per transaction, 2,817 times, for £84.51. On a £14.62 average basket, 3p is 0.21% of every sale - a third again on top of the debit rate. And the count is higher than the number of card payments, because the fee is billed on declined attempts as well. Nobody chooses this line in a negotiation; it arrives inside the contract.
Put together, £355.15 of fees on £39,949 of card sales is an effective 0.89% before VAT. The pence turned a 0.60% deal into a 0.89% one, which is the recurring lesson of every small-basket business in this series: below about £20 a basket, the pence are the price.
Our verdict
An honest comparison site has to say it: this is a good deal, and a flat-rate reader advertising "no hidden fees" would roughly double this store's bill. The audit point is not the provider, it is the secure transaction fee - the line to challenge at renewal, because at this transaction count every penny off it is worth £28 a month.
This is a genuine document reviewed through our free statement review service. The business's name, location details, merchant ID and every other identifier have been removed; the fee lines, rates and totals are reproduced unedited. Spot an error? It goes on the public corrections log.
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