On the right side of the add recipients page, it breaks down the cost of your send as you add recipients.
The line item “Merchant Fees” refers to additional fees that are reserved for certain incentives that may have an additional charge that is passed through to you as the sender of the incentive.
These incentives include premium options such as PayPal, Venmo, Deposit to Debit, Direct Deposit, and physical gift cards that have a postage charge.
These incentives are notated by an icon that is a bubble with a dollar sign in it as shown in the image below.
You can exclude the cards that include a “merchant” fee from your incentive selection by changing the settings on your incentive page by toggling on the “restrict project to incentives without fees” switch. Make sure you read the additional information on this feature by clicking on the blue information bubble.
Please note: toggling this switch on does not exclude incentives that include postage delivery fees.
Another thing to keep in mind is if you have included “All Incentives” as your incentives selection you will always have some additional merchant fees that are reserved for your send. This is because the physical delivery cards will be included in your selection and they have a postage delivery fee that shows up as a merchant fee.
Any Merchant Fees that are listed here in your cost breakdown are fees that are earmarked and only used if a recipient chooses an item that includes those additional fees. If they do not select one of these incentives the earmarked merchant fees are automatically returned to you account after they make their selection.