Rick,

The 5 cents fee goes ON THE TOP of processor's charges. For a merchant doing just 50 transactions a day(not a big merchant by any stretch of imagination)it results in $75 per month or $900 per year, this year and year after...

Authorize.Net and alikes are not processors no matter what they say. Their services will always include those surcharges. They do provide simple protocol to send cc transaction data to their gateway and this should be compared with the simplicity (or difficulty) of the products that developers like us provide for direct connection to the processing networks. I believe, the informed developer will make the right choice.

Joshua