Plenty of people will tell you to switch. Most of them get paid when you do. So here’s a clean way to decide for yourself. It’s five short steps.
1 · Know what you pay now
Start with your real, all-in rate today — total fees divided by total card sales. Here’s how to find it, or use the calculator.
2 · Know what’s achievable
A cleanly priced account usually lands around 2.3% to 2.6%. That’s a fair target for what you could be paying. (For some practices there’s a lower floor still — see the note at the end.)
3 · Do the savings math
(Your rate now − the achievable rate) × your yearly card volume = your rough yearly savings. If you run $600,000 a year and you’d go from 3.5% to 2.5%, that’s about $6,000 a year.
4 · Count the one-time costs
Switching isn’t free. The big one is any early-termination fee in your current contract, plus a bit of setup time. Add those up. (Where the math clearly works, Sondara will sometimes help offset that termination fee — but only after we’ve run the numbers, never as a blanket promise.)
5 · Work out the payback
One-time costs ÷ yearly savings = your payback period. If you’d earn it back quickly — and the savings are structural, not a teaser rate that creeps back — switching pays. If the payback is long or the savings are small, it probably doesn’t.
And sometimes the answer is “don’t”
If you’re already priced well, or the savings are too small to bother, the honest answer is to stay put. We’ll tell you that. An advisor who only ever says “switch” isn’t an advisor.
A Sounding runs this whole test on your actual numbers — what you pay, what’s achievable, what it’d cost to move, and whether it’s worth it at all.