Even after a lifetime of studying construction contract paperwork it never occurred to me that anyone would pay for big-ticket home improvement with a credit card. I was caught up short when a remodeler I know commented about the merchant services charges his company was being billed on credit card payments regularly made by his customers. Those credit card processing fees (also known as “swipe fees”) were eating into his profit margins, and over time summed to thousands of dollars of unwelcome expense.