Payment Optimization: Helping you reduce the costs of payment acceptance during economic uncertainty Good afternoon and/or good morning, everyone, depending upon where you may be. I would like to welcome you to the U.S. Bank and Elavon Payment Optimization webinar. As Riley indicated, my name is Karen Aaron, and I lead our strategic markets retail vertical here at Elavon. Presenting with me today are two of our payment experts, Oliver Gumbrill, who is the Vice President of Payment Optimization and Consulting, and Mr. Alan Vickness, Senior Product Manager for Debit Commercial Products. Could we move to the next slide? So I wanted to present this slide to you today just to kind of kick off and give an overview, and I know as many of you are aware, the cost of accepting card payments is pretty significant and has increased profoundly over the years. This slide is really just a simple depiction of the outlines, the components that make up your cost of accepting payments. So obviously, as you can see, a big piece of that are the interchange and assessment costs that make up about 99% of what you pay to process the credit card transaction or debit card transaction. That little 1% really are just mostly made up of your acquirer gateway fees. We showed it because that big piece, the interchange cost of it is a lot of what we're going to talk about today, and that 93%-- and this is how we can help you manage those costs the best that you can. Next slide, please. So we really wanted to talk about payment optimization today because we know and many of you know that there are significant challenges and pain points that come with accepting payments, managing the cost of payments, et cetera. It's a very complex process, and if you don't manage the process properly, it can cause you to incur excessive costs for your payment acceptance. So obviously our ultimate goal is to help you reduce the cost that you incur when accepting payments, and to provide you with an opportunity to maximize your revenues and profit. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Mr. Oliver Gumbrill who's going to take us through how we're how we're going to do that for you and what we're going to talk about today and some of the solutions that we can offer. So if you can move to the next slide, I'll turn it over to Oliver. Thank you, Karen. Hey, everybody, I'm excited to be here with you. Again, my name is Oliver Gumbrill, I'm based and live in Atlanta, Georgia, and I'm responsible for payment optimization. And payment optimization, again, is where Karen was communicating in that visual of the total cost of payments. My team and I are responsible for helping all of you shrink the pie, reduce the total cost of payments. And again, today we're going to focus on a number of ways we can do that for you and help you and partner with you, but how do we get there? So when you look at this slide, this slide you talks about, what is our objective with optimization? So myself and the team are constantly analyzing current environments and setups and the rules. Again, Visa and Mastercard, the card brands, they actually make changes in the U.S. Usually twice a year, often in April and October. And as the rules change, as things are evolving, we look into how can we help our partners and clients in the current environment? And we look for opportunities, and then we come with recommendations-- not only recommendations for you, but recommendations that apply across the board in the industries we serve. So we do that by thinking outside the box, and things that we have done and solutions you're going to hear about involve transaction enhancements, preferred rates where we've worked with the card brands on behalf of our partners to get discounted rates in certain scenarios, and then also routing capabilities. And we have a suite of services that fall within that optimization. You're going to hear about a handful of them today. These aren't all of them, but these are really valuable ones. First we going to talk about commercial card optimization, then we're going to talk about service fee, convenience fee, and surcharge fees, and then we're going to finish up with debit optimization and questions at the end. Next slide. All right, we're going to get into commercial card optimization. So just so everybody knows, again, to be on the same playing field, what are we talking about commercial card optimization? Commercial cards, if you think about it, there are two types of broad names for what falls within commercial cards. One is business cards and corporate cards, and some of you might hear the words P-card or a fleet card or a virtual card-- I mean, we can get all the nitty gritty, but again, there are a variety of different cards that fall within commercial card usage. And this is a fun slide because it says two things. One is, commercial card interchange and the different qualifications and its detailed needs has been around for a long time. Well over a decade and it's-- the unfortunate thing about it, though, is that nationwide, less than 50% of all commercial card transactions qualify for the best rates. And the other interesting fact that the visual is showing here, this is actually-- you can't really see it because it's so small in the bottom, but it starts in January 2014 and goes through current day, and what you see here is that the average volume growth for commercial cards is growing 30% year over year. So that means all of us, all of you every year are getting more and more cards being used at your organizations, 30% more on average of volume, and these are expensive. So what can we do about it? If you move to the next slide. Again, this slide has a lot going on here. What we're hone in on first is on the right. So when it comes to business cards and corporate cards, which all fall under commercial cards, it depends on how you process the transaction with data. There's a level 1, level 2, and level 3. And when we're talking about these levels, when we're talking about going from level 1, you're basically doing everything well in the general rule of the card partners. You are sending in an electronic authorization, it's an electronic transaction, you're sending an AVS, and I can go on into the weeds, but we're not going to. But you're doing the basics correct. When you add, again, six data elements, really around is it taxable or not, and the tax amount, is it-- is taxable, and a few more data elements, then you can qualify for level 2. And level 2 is more affordable than level 1 when it comes to interchange. But if you were to send in 20-plus data elements, a whole bunch more information on that transaction, then you get to level 3, and level 3 is even more affordable than level 2. So again, the more data you send in, the more affordable the rates get when it comes to, again, commercial card types and the interchange costs for them. And commercial card optimization, when we talk about it, we're talking about a software that we've built that, again, collects and transfers data on behalf of our partners in order to make sure that you're qualifying at the most affordable best-in-class rates. If we move on to the next slide. This is kind of just a summary, and it kind of gets to the point of commercial card optimization. Again, I touched on it in the last slide really quick, but it's a backend software. This isn't a software that resides at your location. It doesn't require you to update technologies on your end, this is on our end. And again, it's running in the background collecting and transferring data based upon your business and the commercial cards that you're processing in order to get to the best rates. And that's not like some of the best rates, right? Remember on the couple slides before I talked about less than 50% are qualifying as the best rates, we're talking about getting you to 100% of the best rates. Not 50%, not less than 50%-- if you're already at 80%, we'll get to 100% with our help and our software. And what does that mean from, again, when you think of what Karen said earlier, we were about helping you reduce your cost, but why? So that you can keep more revenue so that you can then use that money to run your business and manage your business day to day. And on average, we'll be able to help save 40 to 100 basis points on the transaction. So 40 to 100 basis points, that's a significant amount on the card volume we're talking about. The next bullet point's about sharing. What's the cost of this? Well, everything we do is based upon a share. What does that mean? That means if our software creates savings for your organization, we share in the savings. So if we save you $1, the only way we get paid for our service is by sharing in that savings. So there's no initiation fee, there's no setup fee, there's no mandatory minimum fee every month. If we create savings, we share in it. If we don't create savings, then our software runs in the background for free and you don't pay us for it. The only time, again, you pay for it is when we create savings, the 40 to 100 basis points before. Again, no upfront costs, no changes on your end, no business changes, no people changes, no technology changes, this is, again, working with us. But there is one main thing that's needed in order for us to enable commercial card optimization, and that's an addendum. And that addendum is two and a half pages long, I think it's quite simple. We've evolved it so that, again, it's not overcomplicated or cumbersome, but it does require-- it basically needs to be reviewed by you and your legal team and then signed, and then we can set you up, and once we receive the signed addendum, we can enable a client and partner on commercial card optimization within 72 hours. Usually it's sometimes the same day, but our SLA is within three business days. All right, so that's commercial card optimization and we're going to move on. The next set of services that, again, when we think about reducing the total cost of payments, again, so that you can keep more of your revenue, are going to be the acceptance fee programs, and we're going to touch on three of them even though all of them are not applicable, but it's a good story and you need to hear it. But the ones that are applicable we're going to focus on, too. So move on. All right. So this slide-- and this is very strategic here, this slide. So stop for a second. I talked about commercial card optimization. Commercial card optimization is where we're reducing and shrinking the total cost of-- shrinking that pie. When we talk about these card brands, fee programs that we offer in our services, we're talking about passing the total cost of payments onto the cardholder or your customer. So we're not talking about shrinking the pie, we're talking about moving the pie from your cost to the cardholder's cost. And we wanted to kind of, again, make sure that you know that we do offer convenience fees and we offer service fees and surcharge, and we're going to focus on the finish line, the surcharge, because this is the one that's really valuable-- I believe most valuable for our audience today, but you need to know the history. So there's been a journey, and convenience fees started in the late '90s, and it was created by the card brands, again, to promote e-commerce, online payments, because that was brand new, right? The Y2K and the Dot-Com bubble and how do we get people to buy more or use their credit cards online? That was establishing convenience fees. Again, and this is called a convenience cost that you would pass to your customer based upon alternative channels. What does that mean? Like think back to the late '90s, early 2000s, every e- commerce website was based upon like a brick and mortar. So if a grocery store had brick and mortar, then they would be selling online, essentially, or they tried to sell back then online. And in that case, making the sell of the service convenient online allowed for you to pass the cost of payments-- again, the pie, the total cost of payments onto your client. But then it evolved, and people-- that started to pick up a little bit of momentum. But then in the early 2000s, service fees came around, and service fees is, again, similar to convenience fee, but service fee is specifically about promoting card usage when it comes to public industry. What does that mean? Government, higher education merchants. Because again, a lot of consumers were using their credit cards for day-to-day purchases, but hey, how can we motivate, how can we get card usage-- that is, a university to accept credit cards for the tuition based upon moving the total cost of payment back to the actual consumer, the cardholder? And again, the government agencies, they made progress, but it was very limited. It's a very limited based upon your merchant category. So again, if you're not a public entity, you're not able to do service fees. But the good news is is, again, the evolution of how these fees have come along is, at the end of the day, the merchants that could qualify for convenience fees-- and then again, the businesses that couldn't qualify them for services fees went ahead and went to court, and they went to federal court. And they fought for a while and it was very expensive in order to have the opportunity to, again, shrink and eliminate that total cost of processing. Like why if government is allowed to do this, why can't we do this? And that is everybody in this audience right now that we're talking to. Again, in 2012 is when surcharge fees came around. Again, it came through merchants and your peers and businesses out there fighting in court and they won. And so since then, now all of these are available for us to leverage. So moving on to the next slide. Really quick, Oliver, I do apologize to interject. We do have a few attendees that are having a little bit of a hard time hearing you, it's a little muffled, a little crackly. I was hoping we can maybe adjust the microphone a little bit. Sure. Has it been going on for a while? Yeah. Oh. Interesting. Let me see if I can-- is it still muffling? A little bit. All right. Let me think out loud. That's a little better. All right, well stop me again if it is-- if you need to. Don't hesitate. OK. OK? Right where you're at sounds a little better. I'm holding a very tight position right here. [LAUGHS] My apologies. You're good. No, no, no. All right, everybody. Well, I apologize for that. Believe it or not, just so everybody knows, we did test this before and we were trying to make sure that everybody could hear clearly. Again, if I need to adjust, I will adjust. So let's kind of get into the weeds of what is convenience fees, what is surcharge fees. Again-- so again, convenient fees, we're looking at offsetting the cost of accepting payments through alternative channels, such as phone, mail, or online. Again, convenience fee, it's reflected, people can see it on their receipts when they actually do a convenience fee. It can't be in a card present or face-to-face transaction. Again, it's a calculated flat rate no matter what the value of the actual item being sold is. And again, the fee is collected at the time of payment. And this is interesting. You need to inform your customer that they are getting charged this, but you don't have to have any official signage or notification, but they do need to be aware. So moving on. Surcharge. All right. Again, surcharge, again, we're not talking about shrinking, we're talking about shifting, right? Passing the total cost of card acceptance to the cardholder or your clients. And again, usually the surcharge fee is-- it ranges between 3% to 4% of the total cost of the product or service that they're buying. Again, this can work with any kind of credit card, but not specifically when you're talking, again, debit cards or other formats. Again, the first bullet point under the fine print talks about it's available for all major credit cards. If there is a return, there is-- the client and your customer would get a proportional part of the surcharge back when returning the item. Again, we're talking about-- I mentioned this a second ago, limited to credit cards, right? So debit cards PIN or signature cannot be surcharged. And then there's limitations here. The limitations are really around geography. So unfortunately, there are a handful of states that you can see on this slide that you are not able to surcharge based upon, again, the state laws that are set. And one thing to note, utilities, again, utilities don't qualify for the opportunity the surcharge, because again, utilities already have their own program, they've had it for a long time under the Visa Utility Interchange Program. Moving on to the next slide. All right. There's a lot of visuals here, there's a lot of bullet points. I'm hoping you hear me clearly. So again, we're really focused on the advantages. We've been talking about the advantages of using these fee services in order to, again, move the costs past the cost of payments onto your cardholder or clients, but there's other benefits. That means you're keeping more revenue, right? Then you can actually do other things really worthwhile, like helping the community with that additional budget that you get because of the services-- the service fee programs that you could use. Again, there are ways to do this with-- ways that you could do it where it's heavy lifting, or ways, again, outsourcing it-- we're going to touch on that in a second. And again, the good news is is, you don't have to worry about digital technology changes. When you outsource it, you allow that technology, again, software providers to be able to do that for you. And again, the benefits are clients get the buy things the way they want to buy them. They get to choose any of the latest payment methods, and support for our service fee, surcharge, and convenience fee programs are 24/7, 365 days. Moving on to the next slide. All right. There's this slide and another slide, and there's-- so again, there's a lot going on here in this visual. I think the main thing to know-- and I've said it probably five, six, maybe 10 times, because I'm trying to make sure that you know-- that we-- when we, again, are thinking about payment optimization, the commercial card optimization, shrinking the pie, or moving the total cost away, the you've got to remember, for service fee, convenience fee, and surcharge, we're talking about reducing your costs so, again, that you can keep your revenue. And depending on your setup and the way you're set up with your technology and our actual software, you can save, again, on average between 60% to 100% of that total cost, but our goal is always to get you to that 100% in the fee programs. Moving on to the next slide. All right, last slide. It's kind of like the quick facts on the commercial card, like what's the-- at the end of the day, how do we go about doing this? How do we get these fee programs implemented? There's two options, major options. One is insourcing. You go ahead and calculate what you want to charge, you work on doing an RFP to figure out like which vendor should you use, and then you go ahead and implement it in your locations and your technologies, and you manage it. And ultimately, as the last bullet point on the left says, I mean, it's a project, and then I'm not-- I'm just setting your expectations. Again, insourcing is a way to do it. It's capable, but it takes people, it takes a plan, it takes a schedule, and then it takes, again, staying on top of the requirements that the card brands will make and change over time like I talked about in April and October. However, if you outsource it-- and again, that's what we're offering are fee programs, we help calculate the specific share-- not the shares, that the actual what you should be charging for the different fees. And again, surcharging starts at 3%, but we can help you navigate, what is best-in- class in your industry, in your part of the geography? Again, we manage everything. So if compliance changes with the card brands, we change, we have to stay on top of that. And we evolve. You don't have to worry about the card brand compliance requirements, we take care of that. And again, now we're talking about instead of internal project and time and people and money on your end, hey, we take on the project, we implement, and there's little to no technical effort-- sometimes there's a little tweak in a setup, but again, it's very minimal when anything is needed technically. So I apologize that I was muffled earlier. That was disappointing to hear, but that said, I am fortunate that I get to pass the baton onto Alan now. Again, Alan is going to talk to us about another service that helps you, again, reduce your total cost of payments. Hey, Oliver. Thank you, and thank you, everybody, for giving us the chance to maximize your savings for yourself and your clients. The last leg of the stool is debit optimization. So we've covered interchange optimization, we've covered surcharging, and then the last leg of the stool to encompass the complete package is debit optimization. So what we're going to do is, well, what is the debit market out there? And it's a huge market, it is basically about $2 trillion worth of annual volume in the United States. And that is broken out between two guys, right? You have the regulated guys who are your big banks, your issuers, which is basically a bank with greater than $10 billion, and then you have your exempt or unregulated guys, your community banks which essentially is $10 billion in assets and below. So we're going to take a trip in a time capsule and we're going to go back to 2010, and back in 2010, the Durbin Act was passed by Senator Dick Durbin, and essentially at that point in time, what Visa and Mastercard had in the debit world was a duopoly in regard to a routing debit transactions, meaning if the front of your card, Visa or Mastercard, of your debit card, that debit transaction, when you purchase something, had to go to Visa or Mastercard. What this act said is that, oh, wait a minute-- and we're going to make this interactive now. So if anybody would like to pull out their debit cards, we're going to do this interactively. Where my debit card actually has a Mastercard front-facing debit card, and on the back, if you flip it over, the Durbin Act states that there must be two unaffiliated debit networks to give that merchant choice to route that transaction. So for example, my debit card, when you flip it over, has Maestro, which is Mastercard's PIN debit network, and STAR, which is First Data/Fiserv's debit network. So what does that mean? Is that that merchant has a choice to either route that particular transaction to either Mastercard or STAR, essentially. Generally speaking, you will only find two networks on the back of choice. There are a handful, and I would, if I had to guess, probably less than 5% that actually have three networks that you can route it to, but generally speaking, there are usually only two. What does that mean for your clients, essentially? That means if you can route away from the global brands, the Visa/Mastercard to the U.S. Debit networks, on average, you can save with the big guys, the regulated transactions, about anywhere between 5 to 15 basis points per transaction, and then on the unregulated side, roughly about 20 to 25 basis points, just routing it away to the U.S. Debit networks. Next slide. So essentially, the overview of the U.S. Debit market is what I spoke about before where you have two choices, right? I go into a store and I dip or swipe my card, and it literally says, OK, right now would you like Visa or Mastercard debit or U.S. Common debit? And for me, even being in the industry for a long, long time, I tend to lean to where I'm comfortable and I would still like that Visa/Mastercard debit. What that does is if you think about two different trains, you have a signature or peerless train of top, row 1, or a PIN train on the bottom, row 2. That if you select U.S. Common debit-- or I'm sorry, if you select Visa/Mastercard debit, then you are on that signature train in routing and it can only be routed to Visa/Mastercard. If we replace that decision point with entering your PIN, which, in my opinion, is much more simple than that question of U.S. Common debit or Visa/Mastercard debit. And generally speaking, the majority of people out there have either shopped at Starbucks, Home Depot, Publix, Kroger, you name it, there is a reason why they can prompt, and the reason for that is if you think about insurance, right? The more authentications you have, the cheaper the transaction. So PIN is the most secure and cheapest transaction out there. Next slide. So why shift to PIN debit? Very simply there are two reasons. Number one is the customer saves money, and you reduce your fraud. And secondly, it's a lower cost of acceptance. So at the end of the day, I mean, three basic questions are, number one, do your customers want to save money? Check, yes. Number two, do you want a transparent customer experience because everything is done behind the scenes? Yes. And number three, would you like your chargeback or fraudulent transactions to decrease? Absolutely. There's nothing else hidden. It's that simple. So I just like the title of this slide. It says proof is in the PIN. Literally what that means is, PIN is the most secure and cheapest transaction out there, and in an environment like today with COVID and things of that nature where you'll hear the big buzz word about contactless and things of that nature, I just want to ground everybody, is that contactless, a few things happen with contactless. Is it great for the here and now? Potentially. One can make the argument is, is an individual going to shop at your store because it's contactless, yes or no? I would tend to say probably not. That's not the decision point. However, contactless-- your Google Pay, your Apple Pay, your Samsung Pay-- does not eliminate the touch points with the terminals. The customer still has to touch that terminal in order to approve the transaction. And guess what? The merchant loses routing choice. Those particular transactions have to go to Visa and Mastercard. So guess what? That means that they're paying a premium, the customer is still touching the terminal, and not necessarily are you making more money because you're increasing your sales. Next slide. So PIN, it optimizes the cost-- it reduces the cost. Now I'll use a Visa-on-Visa crime example. Visa Signature, which is a PINless transaction, let's say it's on the regulated side, the big banks where interchange is the same, it's the cap, so we're just looking at the assessments. Visa's assessments are 13 basis points and 1.73 cents for every single transaction for signature or PINless. When you compare that to the PIN assessments, which are a flat 3 and 1/2 cents-- so essentially a 13 basis point savings just by changing it to PIN, and guess what? Like I mentioned before, the experience, the customer experience is potentially even simplified because now it's not, hey, do you want to select Visa debit versus U.S. Common debit and saying, enter in your PIN. And generally speaking, nine out of every 10 people feel comfortable entering in their PIN. Once they enter in their PIN, that transaction hops on that debit train and can be routed to the U.S. Debit networks saving the customer money. Next slide. So essentially, what this slide is saying is basically pictorially what I just mentioned. On the left side it says today where you have the global/U.S. AID decision point where it says, hey, is it a Visa/Mastercard debit or U.S. Common debit? And that's where it's like, I don't know, let me just select Visa/Mastercard. That means a signature train. Higher cost, more fraud. We are replacing that with enter in your PIN. Very simply, enter in your PIN, more natural, faster transactions, less fraud, cheaper transaction. Next slide. So what does this mean, essentially? And if we want to take an average of a $50 ticket and we want to run it down-- on the left side, signature, without a PIN; on the right side, with a PIN, what does this truly mean for your customers? Essentially what it means on the signature side is that a final cost, meaning interchange plus assessments, equal roughly $0.52 per transaction for an unregulated transaction, which is the community banks. On the PIN side, that particular same transaction in real money is $0.44. So roughly an $0.08 savings for every single transaction out there that you can think about. So think about like your retailers. How many debit transactions, which is 30% basically of your book, of your overall sales, if you can save essentially-- we'll just round it up just to keep it simple-- $0.10 for every single transaction and you extrapolate that for the number of locations, you are talking a significant amount of money and savings without changing the customer experience. Oh, and guess what? This is that infomercial-- there's more! And I can't quantify it because each merchant is different, your fraudulent transactions will decrease so you're not paying on those as well. So again-- next slide, please. So in summary, if I want everybody to take away from this from a debit perspective is number one, optimize your debit transactions, and in doing that, you will decrease your costs; secondly, the customer experience will be enhanced and transparent; and then thirdly, your fraudulent in chargebacks will decrease. If that sounds good to you, then this is that third leg to the stool and encompassed all of these programs that we discussed today, and it's a win-win across the board. So with that, I'm going to take the baton and gladly hand it off to Karen so that she can wrap it up and answer any further questions that people may have. Thank you, Alan. We do have a few questions in the Q&A, so I'm going to go ahead and throw a couple of those out. And certainly, if you do have any questions, you can put them forth to the Q&A on the Webex or certainly follow up with any of us offline as well. So Alan, because you just finished, I'll go ahead and throw out the question that was relevant to PIN debit. And the question is, how do you get PIN debit on card not present transactions? No, that's a great question. So card not present, if you think about it, card not present or e- commerce activity right now, as more and more activity is streaming towards the web or card- not-present activity, PIN debit is different. PIN debit is face-to-face activities. What you're thinking about is a few things. So card-not-present activity literally goes in, you order yourself online, and then this-- we have the ability in the near-future to route that to the other networks. And from that, there is no pain associated with it, it's just like traditional-- and I'll say it just like that, signature transaction where there is no PIN that is entered. However, behind the scenes, a flag is ticked that we can write it to the U.S. Debit networks in comparison to Visa/Mastercard. And generally speaking, because e-commerce activity is not the most secure-- so the rates are not as different, but there is a savings when it comes to the U.S. Debit networks, and roughly just for perspective, anywhere between 5 to 15 basis points to route it to the other networks. Thank you, Alan. One additional-- one-- I'm sorry-- sorry to cut you off, Karen. One additional comment, I must say, is that there is a big buzz word about 3-D Secure as well where you order something online and you get a code sent to your phone and you enter in that code. I would caution your merchants, because once you have that 3D Secure, you lose routing choice. So taking a step back, I would say, OK, if I'm that true consultant, I'm that true partner, I would say, OK, how many fraudulent charges do I have? And does that cost all in, meaning cost of the service, cost of everything, does that outweigh the savings I could get? It could or it couldn't. For a customer like the size of Amazon, absolutely. If you reduce their fraudulent charges by 5-- 1%, let's just say, that's a huge savings for them. However-- so I would just keep that in the back of your mind when considering the debit optimization for card-not-present activity, and then specifically in regard to security or 3-D Secure on top of that. It's not just an easy answer, I apologize. Thank you, Alan. Just a couple more. What is the cost if the client opts out of PIN debit? Well, if the client opts out of PIN debit, essentially they are just being routed front of card. So that transaction or that customer goes into the terminal and they select and they use their debit card, it's either being routed Visa or Mastercard. Essentially opting out of the opportunity to save roughly 10 basis points on the regulated side and roughly between 20 and 25 in the unregulated side. That's what it boils down to. Not sure the reason why-- not sure the reason why. If it was me and it was my business, not sure why a customer would opt out of the program. However, if they do, that's the answer. Thank you very much. I'm going to shift over to Oliver for a second just-- there were some questions as it related to commercial card optimization. So Oliver, one of the questions was, can you pass an amount of zero for level 3 and still qualify? Did we lose you, Oliver? I'm here, can you hear me? Yep, we can hear you now, thanks. All right. So zero as the sales tax amount is eligible and within the rules of the card brands for level 3. So yes. If you have a tax-exempt transaction or a non-sales tax item or you are a merchant or a business or an organization in a non-sales tax state like Oregon or Montana, again, passing zero for sales tax for level 3 is eligible. Thank you very much. Another question as it relates to commercial card optimization, Oliver, and this was a combination of a few questions that were kind of asking the same thing in a bit of a different way. How are consumers accepting this new surcharge fee that they have to pay, and is there consumer dissatisfaction? Yeah. So when we're talking about surcharge fees, again, I think if you were asking us five, 10 years ago if consumers and cardholders were getting frustrated, I would have said, in that case, potentially, yeah. I think when it was new and when we were introducing passing the cost on in surcharge fees, again, when it's first experienced, people were like what? Why do I have to pay this? However, again, think about it, the slide where I was talking about the evolution. Again, surcharge came to us and was available starting in 2012, and before that, consumers and cardholders started to experience convenience fees in the '90s, in the early 2000s, service fee-- I mean, service fee is extensive now in the public sector. So I would say today, cardholders are used to it. Again, think about it, I know I pay for-- we talked about utilities having their own program. Again, paying your service via your credit card, you've almost always been paying a fee and they've been passing that on to you. So I would say today, eight years later after surcharge officially got approved, that, again, cardholders and consumers accept it as the norm and are becoming more and more acceptable of that fee. Thank you, Oliver. Just a couple other questions, and then we can wrap up. I'm just trying to make sure that I get all the questions here in the Q&A. Is the card optimization software proprietary to Elavon or a partnership with a third party? That's a great question. I like that question. So it is proprietary to us. We don't partner with any third party when it comes to the commercial card optimization. It's something we built, we built in-house, and the software resides within our mainframe and on our side of the firewalls. So again, it's all on us. That's great because our developers, as rules change and things change with the card brands, then we can adjust in real-time before those become eligible in the, again, April and October rates. It's all ours. And I can comment in regard to the debit side of the equation. Two things that I would really want to point out to everybody's attention is that I personally have reached out and is in contact with the four largest U.S. Debit networks-- STAR, NYCE, PULSE, and Accel and have secured preferred proprietary rates above and beyond discounted that no other required processor out there has currently right now. So our program is extremely similar to the competition; however, our rates are lower. And I can confidently tell you that because in my former role I was the head of merchant pricing. Let's just say that I set the pricing. So with that said, another value point or competitive advantage with us is that one of our largest competitors, in fact, clearly states in Section 2.16 on their addendum that they guarantee least cost billing, not least cost routing. And what does that mean? What does that mean very simply is that the networks bill the processors a certain amount. That doesn't necessarily mean that that amount is being passed through to the merchants. Where we guarantee least cost routing because it clearly states that in our addendum where our competition does not. Thank you, Alan. One other question that I'm seeing as it relates to debit, and I hope I capture this properly because it's cutting off a little bit in the Q&A, but in a retail environment, if somebody-- a consumer or an employee presses the green button for credit, does that change the routing and cost? So a very great question. Very, very simply is that nine out of every 10 customers prefer to put in their PIN. Those that don't and want to bypass it, it's business as usual. You just swipe that red, yellow, or green button and it goes down on that signature train down its merry way. So business as usual. Thank you very much, Alan. So sales were the only questions that I did see in the Q&A, but we will certainly make sure that we do go through everything and respond directly to you if there was a question that we missed. So I would like to personally thank everybody for their investment of time today, and thank you for your attention. We certainly appreciate it and we welcome any further discussion with you. And would encourage you, if you would like to have any additional information or conversations, to reach out to your Elavon client executive or your U.S. Bank representative. So if there's nothing else, I will go ahead and close the call. Thank you all very, very much.