Interchange fee

Payments - cards - charges.

(IF).

Interchange fees or charges relate to credit cards, debit cards, and other cards.

Interchange charges are levied by the merchant acquiring company (normally a bank or other financial institution that "buys” the transactions from the retailer at a discount).

They include transaction fees for debit cards and turnover fees for credit cards charged by the card acquirer that processes card payments on behalf of the retailer.

Interchange charges are often negotiable and depend on the volume of transactions, the average transaction size, the method of processing and the credit quality of the transactions.

UK to EEA online IFs rise - leading to competitive disadvantages

"The Payments Systems Regulator (PSR) published a Working Paper – Market review of UK-EEA cross-border interchange fees. Amongst its observations was that:

Mastercard and Visa have increased IFs for card-not-present (CNP) UK-EEA transactions using consumer debit and credit cards from 0.2% and 0.3% to 1.15% and 1.15% respectively and fees paid by acquirers increased by approximately £75 million to £100 million in the first half of 2022.

UK merchants who are selling online to EEA customers and are not able to relocate may find themselves at a competitive disadvantage compared with EEA competitors selling online to the same EEA customers."

Update on the Payments landscape – October 2023 - ACT Blog - Naresh Aggarwal.

See also

• Acquirer
• Anti-steering provision
• Card not present (CNP)
• Credit
• Credit card
• Cross-border interchange fee
• Debit card
• Emerging Payments Association
• European Economic Area (EEA)
• Interchange Fee Regulation (IFR)
• Mastercard
• Pay
• Payment
• Payments and payment systems
• Processing fee
• PSOR
• Receipt
• Remittance
• Scheme fee
• Visa