Merchants

Empowering merchants with smarter debit routing choice

Debit processing fees are driven less by the individual transaction and more by the network your payments are routed through — which makes having control over your debit routing choice essential to managing costs.

The challenge is that many merchants unknowingly route debit transactions through higher cost networks simply because their routing preferences aren’t optimized. Without a clear, data-driven routing strategy, it’s easy to miss meaningful savings — especially across high-volume, mobile and e-commerce transactions.

That’s where SHAZAM makes a difference. As one of the nation’s leading independent debit networks, we equip merchants with the tools, expertise and modern infrastructure needed to fully leverage their debit routing choice and reduce debit processing fees — all while delivering fast, reliable checkout experiences.

When your routing is optimized, you can lower debit processing costs, maintain strong approval rates and keep more of every sale.

Lower debit processing costs start with better routing logic

Debit transactions don’t have to follow the most expensive path. With least-cost debit routing, merchants can automatically route each transaction to the lowest cost eligible network available on the card — helping reduce overall debit network fees while maintaining fast, secure payment processing.

What many merchants don’t realize is that every U.S. debit card is required to support at least two unaffiliated networks, thanks to the requirements set by the Durbin Amendment. That means you can choose the most economical routing path while maintaining transaction speed, approval rates and security.

Lowering processing fees and identifying least-cost routing is just the start. With SHAZAM as your debit network partner, you also gain support to address fraud, transaction-level risk and a wide range of other payment challenges.

Stronger fraud protection

Challenge:

As digital and card-not-present transactions grow, so does the volume of fraud attempts. Card testers exploit online and mobile environments, and without strong network-level controls, even a short burst of fraudulent activity can lead to lost revenue, higher chargeback exposure and operational disruption.

Solution:

SHAZAM uses advanced, real-time fraud monitoring to evaluate risk before it impacts your business. Our network analyzes patterns, flags anomalies and helps block suspicious activity quickly and effectively, so you benefit from better protection, fewer false declines and clearer visibility into the transactions flowing through your payments environment.

Increased transaction-level visibility

Challenge:

Merchants often struggle to understand why certain transactions are declined, why approval rates vary by channel or which networks are impacting performance. Without this visibility, optimizing payments becomes guesswork.

Solution:

SHAZAM provides clear, actionable insight into transaction behavior across all purchase environments, including mobile, unattended and e-commerce payments. Through detailed reporting and analytics, you get visibility into approval rates, routing decisions, decline patterns and emerging trends — helping you make smarter operational decisions and maintain a smoother checkout experience.

Savings without switching processors

Challenge:

Many merchants hesitate to optimize their debit routing because they worry it will require changing merchant processors — a task that can be time-consuming, expensive and operationally disruptive. As a result, businesses often stick with inefficient routing paths and miss out on meaningful cost savings.

Solution:

All major merchant processors across the U.S. are already connected to the SHAZAM payments network. That means you don’t need to switch processors or overhaul your payment systems to benefit from optimized routing.

Instead, you can simply ask your existing processor to route eligible transactions to the SHAZAM network. This small change can generate significant savings across every payment environment — from POS lanes to fuel pumps to e-commerce checkout.

The value of debit routing choice

Merchants today process billions of debit transactions each year — and the fees and routing requirements tied to those payments can significantly impact operating costs. Data shows just how important it is for merchants to optimize their routing options.

number of unaffiliated networks all U.S. debit cards are required to support

amount merchants save annually from routing to independent debit networks

average reduction in acceptance costs merchants see when using optimized debit routing

Why merchants choose SHAZAM

As an independent debit network, SHAZAM provides merchants with more flexibility and cost control than traditional global card networks, which often layer licensing, assessment and processing fees into every transaction.

Instead of nickel-and-diming merchants with excessive fees, SHAZAM operates with streamlined pricing and efficient single message debit processing, helping you retain a larger portion of every purchase.

Ready to reduce costs while keeping checkout friction-free?