Exactly. 2.9% is very high for card-present transactions where the risk of fraud is lower and 1.9% is more normal. The extra 1% will cover a lot of fraud/chargebacks.
What's the typical Visa and MasterCard vig these days? Isn't it around 2.5%?
Visa and Mastercard charge merchant account providers a set percentage (called interchange) and then the providers mark up from there. Interchange is different for every industry because of varying fraud and chargeback rates. Also consider the risk of card present versus card not present (or ecommerce). So I guess this is a long way of saying it depends. For card present situations like Square will always be, you can get an account under 2% if you are in a low risk industry and hammer your sales agent.