The Closest Government Wage Data Available
No Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational code covers merchant services sales agents by name. The closest legitimate proxy is Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, SOC code 41-4012.00, which had a median wage of $34.65 per hour, or $72,080 per year, as of the most recent BLS wage-data year, per O*NET OnLine’s republished BLS figures. The same occupational code covered total employment of 1,310,500 workers in 2024, with 114,800 projected annual job openings across the 2024-2034 projection period, combining growth and replacement demand.
O*NET is a US Department of Labor-sponsored site that republishes BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data by occupational code, the same imperfect-but-real proxy approach used elsewhere for sales roles without a dedicated code of their own.
Why This Number Understates What an Agent Actually Earns
The wholesale-and-manufacturing sales representative proxy describes a base-wage-driven role. A merchant services agent’s real income structure runs almost entirely on commission and a compounding residual stream tied to the transaction volume of every merchant they have boarded, an income model this occupational code was never designed to measure. A new agent’s early-career income can sit well below the $72,080 median while they build a book, and an agent years into a growing residual portfolio can sit well above it, with the proxy’s single median obscuring both ends of that range.
Total US card network purchase volume reached $2.909 trillion in Q1 2026, up 7.9% year over year, the growing transaction base every agent’s residual income is ultimately a small percentage of. A wage proxy built around a fixed hourly rate cannot reflect that a growing market is directly, mechanically growing an agent’s own income at the same time, in a way most base-wage sales roles never experience.
The Numbers
The closest BLS occupational proxy for a merchant services sales agent, Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing (SOC 41-4012.00), had a median wage of $34.65 per hour, or $72,080 per year, as of the most recent wage-data year.
O*NET OnLine, Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing (citing BLS wage data)
The same occupational code covered total employment of 1,310,500 workers in 2024.
O*NET OnLine, Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing (citing BLS employment data)
114,800 annual job openings are projected for the same occupational code over the 2024-2034 projection period, combining growth and replacement demand.
O*NET OnLine, Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing (citing BLS employment projections)
US card network purchase volume reached $2.909 trillion in Q1 2026, up 7.9% year over year, the growing base an agent’s residual income is a small percentage of.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- O*NET OnLine, Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing
- Nilson Report, US Card Network Results First Quarter 2026