The RMO API is live — this page is the business side of it. Revenue economics, settlement, dispute rules, the integration kit, and a sandbox certification path, all in one place. Built for ISO/MSP processors, regional acquirers, POS companies, gateways, and vertical SaaS platforms.
RMO is a closed-loop network: RMO is the issuer, the network, and the acquirer at once. For your merchants, that means RMO drops in as one more tender type at checkout — selected, authorized, and settled through the same RMO API your developers already see documented.
POS or online cart, RMO shown as a tender option
Your platform routes the tender to RMO
Auth & capture on api.rmous.org
Signed event posted back to your endpoint
Funds to the merchant, your markup to you
RMO charges a flat 1.00% buy rate to process on the network — no per-transaction fee, no interchange, no scheme assessments. You set your own markup above that, up to the program cap, and you keep all of it. Card-network ISO and acquirer channels keep only a thin 10–20% residual of the merchant rate; here, every basis point you add is yours.
The flat rate to process on the network. No per-transaction fee, no interchange, no assessments.
Set your own rate on top of the buy rate, up to the program cap, and keep every basis point of it.
No monthly minimums, no PCI non-compliance fees, no statement, batch, or representment fees.
| Component | Rate | Who keeps it |
|---|---|---|
| RMO buy rate | 1.00% of volume | RMO |
| Your processor markup | You set it — up to +1.00% over the buy rate | You — 100% |
| Chargeback protection optional | +0.70% of volume | RMO Protection |
Structure your markup as a percentage, a per-transaction fee, or both — whatever fits your book — as long as the blended rate stays within the program cap. The optional 0.70% chargeback-protection premium is elected by the merchant and paid to RMO Protection; it is never part of your markup and carries no partner share. See Risk & Disputes.
| Network | What the partner keeps | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Visa / Mastercard ISO / acquirer | ~10–20% of MDR | Interchange (~70–80% of MDR) leaves the network to the card issuer; scheme assessments are deducted before any residual. |
| American Express OptBlue | ~10–18% of MDR | Residual is what remains after the Amex discount rate and network fees. |
| Discover | ~10–18% of MDR | Residual after the interchange-equivalent and assessment are taken out. |
| RMO Payments Network closed-loop | 100% of your markup | RMO’s buy rate is a flat 1%. Everything you set above it is yours — no interchange, no assessments, no revenue split. |
For comparison: a $100 Visa sale at a ~2.30% merchant discount generates $2.30 in fees — roughly $1.65 of it is interchange to the issuer and ~$0.14 scheme assessment, leaving a thin processor markup an ISO might keep ~$0.25 of. Without chargeback protection the RMO merchant pays just 1.75%, well under the card rate; with it, the 2.45% all-in buys fraud coverage a bare card rate does not include — and either way you set and keep the full $0.75 markup.
| Flow | Timing | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Merchant funding — RMO Bank account | Same day (T+0) | Captures before the 6:00 PM ET cutoff settle the same business day. |
| Merchant funding — external bank account | Next day (T+1) | Settled by ACH to the merchant’s linked external account. |
| Partner markup payout | Monthly | Your accumulated markup is paid by the 5th business day of the following month, with a per-merchant statement. |
| Rolling reserve | First 90 days | A 5-day rolling reserve applies during ramp, then releases for partners with clean dispute history. |
RMO underwrites and onboards the merchant of record. As the integration partner, you carry no settlement liability for RMO-network fraud losses on tokenized transactions. Disputes run on a closed-loop process, not the card-scheme chargeback system.
| Event | Rule | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| Reversal | Full or partial, allowed any time before capture. Releases the hold immediately. | $0 |
| Refund | Full or partial after capture. Funds return to the member same or next day. | $0 |
| Dispute / chargeback | 60-day window. Member opens the dispute in MyRMO; merchant submits representment evidence through the API. | $0 representment |
| Card-not-present fraud | Liability sits with the merchant unless an RMO step-up verification was completed on the transaction. | — |
| Tokenized POS fraud | RMO absorbs network-side fraud loss on chip/tap transactions carrying a valid pan token. | — |
Merchants can elect RMO chargeback protection for an additional 0.70% of volume. It is underwritten by RMO Protection and covers dispute and fraud losses on transactions the merchant handled honestly and in good faith — non-gross fraud. It does not cover merchant error, misrepresentation, non-delivery, or gross negligence. The 0.70% premium is paid to RMO Protection; it is not part of your processor markup and carries no partner revenue share.
The kit pairs with the developer docs. Start in the shared sandbox — no contract required to test — then move to certification.
The full machine-readable contract for every endpoint. Available as .yaml and .json.
Pre-built requests for auth, capture, reverse, payment-code redemption, and webhook subscriptions — wired to the public sandbox.
Shared sandbox keys plus fixture card tokens and payment codes for approve/decline scenarios.
Canonical HMAC verification snippet and the retry/replay-safety rules for your receiver.
Generate a Node, PHP, Python, Java, or C# client straight from the OpenAPI spec with openapi-generator.
The exact scenarios your sandbox run must pass before live keys are issued.
openapi-generator-cli generate \ -i https://www.rmous.org/network/developers/openapi.yaml \ -g python -o ./rmo-clientSwap
-g python for typescript-node, php, java, or csharp.
A sandbox-only exercise — no commercial commitment to run it. Work through the cases below against the public sandbox tenant, capture the request/response pairs, and submit them with your go-live request. RMO issues pk_live_* keys on a passing run.
GET /v1/me, authorize to approved, and handle decline codes 14, 54, 61, 62, and 75.Idempotency-Key returns the original response, never a double charge.RMO POS tokenization means your platform never receives or stores a raw card number — you handle only the 17-character opaque pan token. That typically reduces your PCI scope toward SAQ-A territory. Note that PCI DSS still applies to every entity in the cardholder-data flow — merchants, processors, acquirers, issuers, and service providers — per the PCI Security Standards Council. RMO supplies a compliance packet and our own attestation during certification.
Where ACH is used to fund merchants or move settlement, Nacha’s third-party-sender and third-party-service-provider obligations apply. RMO operates as the originating party for RMO-network ACH flows; your role and any registration requirements are defined in the partnership agreement. See Nacha for the third-party rules.
RMO is the issuer, the network, and the acquirer. There is no card scheme to register with, no separate interchange agreement, and no scheme-mandated fee schedule. Underwriting, settlement, and dispute handling all run through RMO — a single counterparty for your compliance and finance teams.
| Item | Commitment |
|---|---|
| Sandbox & certification support | Best-effort, business hours, via Processor Partnerships. |
| Production incident response | 24/7. P1 acknowledged within 15 minutes, P2 within 1 hour. |
| Technical account manager | Named TAM for established-volume partners. |
| Status & advance notice | Live status page; breaking-change and deprecation notice in advance. |
Run the sandbox certification today — no contract needed to test. When you are ready for commercial terms and live keys, Processor Partnerships will take it from there.