A couple of ratios help illuminate the crime scene. Credit card vendors were making 0.04¢ on every dollar ($0.3 billion / $788 billion) they processed from their large merchants. Now compare this to 1.8¢ on the dollar, the profit they were making on small merchants ($2.4 billion / $130 billion). Their profit margin from small businesses was forty-five times higher than from billion-dollar corporations. I rechecked my math three times before that number sunk in. Small businesses pay forty-five times more than the giants do. We had identified a big problem and a good reason to start a company.
