Most web businesses are looking for ways to reduce operating costs in order to improve their bottom lines. One area overlooked due to its complexity is the cost of credit card processing.

To help address this, Optimized Payments Consulting has launched a free online calculator.

"It is a simple tool that will clear up misconceptions about processing costs and show businesses their true effective cost of processing credit and debit cards. This realization will cause merchants to take action and in the process add significant savings to their bottom line," notes Anand Goel, founder of Optimized Payments.

Pricing in the credit card processing industry is very complex and most merchant statements do not make it any easier to understand.

There are so many technical and industry laden terms (Interchange, qualification tiers, downgrades, batch fee, ACH fee, authorization fee, settlement fee, AVS fee, PCI compliance fee, etc.) that even a sophisticated financial manager can get cross-eyed.

This free online credit card calculator tool simplifies some of the complex pricing schemes used by processors and calculates the ‘real’ percentage rate of processing credit and debit card sales.

For many web merchants this should help clears up misconceptions about processing costs.

Most web merchants just want to know that the overall cost of processing card payments – it is really 2.5% or some artifically low "Qualified Rate."

This tool helps calculate your effective cost of card processing. If you wish the company can also send you a personalized analysis that compares your effective rate with other merchants of your size and in your industry.

Online credit card calculator: http://www.optimizedpmts.com/calculator/calculator.php