If You Run a Gym, You're Probably Being Overcharged for at Least Three Things

A few years back, our CEO Dan opened his first gym. Before the doors were even open, he spent a month — a full, actual month — negotiating a payment processing contract. Fax machines. Bank statements. Birth certificates. Signatures on signatures. The whole song-and-dance.

At the end of it, the sales guy shook his hand and proudly handed him a 1.9% rate.

Dan thought he'd won.

Four months later, one of his earliest gym members happened to work in banking. He glanced at the contract and called it immediately: "That's not possible." Dan was actually paying closer to 5% once the rewards card surcharges, AmEx fees, PCI compliance fees, monthly batch fees, and assorted "platform fees" were stacked on top. The 1.9% only applied to a specific kind of swiped, non-rewards transaction that basically never happens in a gym.

That experience became one of the founding insights behind PushPress. But the bigger lesson wasn't about payments. It was about how the entire financial services industry treats small business owners.

And once you see the pattern, you can't unsee it.

The pattern: opaque pricing + a friendly salesperson + a busy buyer

Almost every financial product a gym owner buys runs on the same model:

• The pricing is intentionally hard to understand.
• There's a salesperson whose entire compensation depends on the markup.
• The buyer (you) is too busy running the business to audit it.
• And nobody — nobody — in that chain is incentivized to tell you the truth.

It's not a conspiracy. It's just what happens when an industry has been doing things a certain way for 50 years and the people getting overcharged are too distracted to push back. You raise prices, nobody complains, so you raise them again. That's the whole business.

You can spot it in the wild by looking for a few tells:

• The rate or price is "tiered," "blended," or "interchange-plus," and nobody can explain it cleanly in one sentence.
• There's a long list of fees buried below the headline number — gateway fees, statement fees, PCI fees, "non-qualified transaction" fees.
• The contract is multiple pages long for what should be a simple service.
• The sales conversation involves a lot of phrases like "I went to bat for you" and "I got you a special rate."

If three or more of those things are true, you're almost certainly being overcharged.

Where this shows up in a typical gym

Walk through your monthly P&L and look at every line item that's a financial product, not a physical thing. You'll usually find at least three:

Payment processing. Almost universally overpriced for small businesses, especially gyms running recurring card-on-file billing. If you're paying more than ~3% all-in and you don't know exactly what every fee on your statement is for, that's the canary.

Insurance. This is the worst offender right now. Premiums roughly doubled for most gym owners post-COVID, and most people just accepted it. "I guess things are riskier now." Meanwhile, the same carriers are walking away from entire states — Florida, California, parts of the Gulf Coast — the moment the math stops favoring them. That's the kind of business you can only run when your margins are so fat that abandoning millions of customers is a strategic choice, not a crisis.

Payroll. This one's mostly been disrupted already (thank you, Gusto), but plenty of gym owners are still on legacy providers paying $200+/month for something that should cost $50–$80.

Lending. Merchant cash advances and equipment financing are some of the most expensive money a small business can borrow. If a "factor rate" was mentioned, you're probably paying 30–80% APR-equivalent — and you may not even realize it.

Bank accounts. Less of a ripoff than it used to be, but still riddled with monthly maintenance fees, minimum balance fees, wire fees, and per-transaction fees on accounts that should be free.

That's five categories. Most gym owners are getting picked off in at least three of them.

Why this works as a business model

Here's the part that should fire you up.

These companies aren't desperate. They aren't operating on thin margins, scrapping for every customer. They're so profitable they can casually decide to stop doing business in entire states because the risk-adjusted return isn't sexy enough. Imagine running a business where walking away from a few million customers is just a strategic line item.

That tells you everything you need to know about how much room there is in the pricing.

Why this is finally starting to change

The good news: technology is doing to financial services what it did to black car service.

Twenty years ago, only the very rich could afford a black car ride to the airport. Now anybody with a phone can pick from a normal car, a black car, or a six-person SUV — all at a price that would have been laughable in 2005. Technology democratizes access. It collapses the price of things that used to be artificially expensive.

The same thing is now happening across small business finance. Payroll already got cheaper. Payments got more transparent. Banking got friendlier. And insurance — historically the most stubborn of the bunch — is starting to crack open too, mostly because software companies with real customer data can underwrite smarter than legacy carriers ever could.

That's not a sales pitch. That's just where the puck is going.

What gym owners should actually do

If you've never done it before, run a one-hour audit on your business this week:

1. Pull your last 12 months of payment processing statements. Add up every fee. Divide by total volume processed. That's your true effective rate. If it's over 3.5%, get a second quote.
2. Pull your current insurance declaration page. Note your premium, your deductible, your coverage limits. Get a fresh quote from a provider that specializes in gyms — not a generic small-business broker.
3. Check your payroll bill. If you're paying more than $80/month flat plus a small per-employee fee, you're on the wrong platform.
4. Look at any financing you've taken on. Calculate the true APR, not the "factor rate." Be ready to be a little angry.

You don't have to act on all of it. Just knowing what you're actually paying changes the conversation the next time a renewal comes up.

The financial services industry has been running the small business world on autopilot for a long time. The hundred dollars here, the eighty there, the $200 over there — that adds up to real money. Money that should be funding your gym, your staff, your members, and your own paycheck.

Not someone else's commission.

PushPress builds transparent, tech-enabled tools for gym owners, including GymInsurance.com, built specifically for the fitness industry. But honestly? Whether you use us or not, just go check your bills.

Frequently asked questions

Why are gyms overcharged for insurance?

Gym insurance pricing is opaque, sold through commissioned brokers, and most owners are too busy running the business to audit it. Premiums roughly doubled post-COVID, and most gyms accepted the increase without comparing quotes. Carriers also face less price pressure in niche industries like fitness, which means margins stay fat.

What is a fair payment processing rate for a gym?

A fair all-in effective rate for a gym running recurring card-on-file billing is typically around 3%. If your true rate — total fees divided by total volume processed — is meaningfully above 3.5%, you're likely being overcharged. The headline rate on your contract is not your effective rate.

How can a gym owner tell if they're being overcharged for financial services?

Watch for four tells: tiered or "blended" pricing that nobody can explain in one sentence; a long list of buried fees (gateway, statement, PCI, non-qualified transaction); contracts that run multiple pages for a simple service; and sales conversations heavy on phrases like *"I got you a special rate."* If three or more apply, you're almost certainly being overcharged.