An interchange fee is the wholesale fee that a merchant's acquiring bank pays to the cardholder's issuing bank each time a card transaction is processed. It represents the largest single component of card-payment economics for issuers and the most structurally significant cost for acquirers. This article explains the payment flow, how Visa and Mastercard set interchange schedules, the regulatory caps imposed by the EU's Multilateral Interchange Fee Regulation and the US Durbin Amendment, the commercial-card carve-outs that remain unregulated, and the practical considerations for fintechs building interchange-revenue models into card programmes.
An interchange fee — sometimes called an interchange reimbursement fee — is a transfer payment made between two financial institutions participating in a four-party card scheme. In the standard four-party model, the cardholder's bank (the issuer) and the merchant's bank (the acquirer) sit at opposite ends of every card transaction. The interchange fee flows from acquirer to issuer and is set not by either of those banks directly, but by the card network itself — Visa or Mastercard — through published rate schedules that take effect on predetermined dates, typically twice per year.
The economic rationale for interchange is rooted in the principle of cost recovery and incentive alignment. Issuers bear the costs of fraud, credit risk, card production, cardholder rewards, and customer service. Interchange compensates them for bearing those costs in a transaction that ultimately benefits the merchant by enabling a sale. Without interchange, the issuer's business model for offering low-or-no annual fee cards — particularly rewards-bearing cards — would be structurally unviable.
The term is sometimes conflated with the broader merchant service charge (MSC), which is the total fee the merchant pays to the acquirer. The MSC comprises three distinct layers: (1) the interchange fee passed to the issuer, (2) the scheme fee paid to the card network, and (3) the acquirer's own margin or processing fee. Interchange is specifically and only the issuer component. This distinction matters legally: EU Regulation 2015/751 on interchange fees (the Multilateral Interchange Fee Regulation, or MIF Regulation) explicitly defines interchange as "any fee paid for each transaction directly or indirectly (i.e. through a third party) between the issuer and the acquirer involved in a card transaction" (Article 2(10)).
Multilateral interchange fees (MIFs) are the default rates set by the network and applied when no bilateral agreement exists between a specific issuer and acquirer. Bilateral interchange fees, by contrast, arise from direct negotiation between two institutions and may deviate from MIF schedules subject to regulatory constraints. In practice, the vast majority of transactions in open-loop networks settle at multilateral rates.
When a cardholder presents a Visa or Mastercard at the point of sale, a multi-step authorisation and settlement lifecycle is initiated. At the moment of authorisation, the acquirer sends the transaction to the relevant card network, which routes it to the issuer for a real-time credit or fraud decision. The issuer approves or declines and the authorisation response travels back through the same path in milliseconds.
Settlement — the actual movement of funds — typically occurs on a T+1 or T+2 basis. The acquirer collects the gross transaction amount from the merchant, retaining the full MSC. It then settles net of interchange with the card network, which in turn transfers the interchange component to the issuer. From the merchant's perspective, the amount received is the transaction value minus the MSC. From the issuer's perspective, interchange income is credited for each settled transaction.
The rate applied to any given transaction is determined by a combination of factors encoded in the transaction data: the card type (debit, credit, prepaid, commercial), the card product (standard, premium, rewards), the merchant category code (MCC), the transaction entry method (chip, contactless, card-not-present), and the geographic origin of the card relative to the acceptance location (domestic versus intra-regional versus cross-border). Visa and Mastercard each publish comprehensive rate tables — typically hundreds of distinct rate categories — that acquirers and issuers use to predict and reconcile interchange flows.
MCC-based pricing tiers are particularly important. Networks offer reduced interchange rates in categories deemed to have thin margins or strong public-policy justifications — supermarkets, petrol stations, utilities, government payments, and charities commonly attract preferential rates. Conversely, high-value retail, airlines, and luxury goods categories may attract premium rates. This tiering incentivises card acceptance across verticals where merchants might otherwise resist card payments.
For card-not-present (CNP) transactions — e-commerce, mail order, telephone order — interchange rates are structurally higher than their card-present equivalents because the fraud risk profile is demonstrably greater. This differential is a fundamental input in the unit economics of any card issuing programme designed to service online commerce.
After settlement, issuers receive consolidated interchange income reports from the network, typically monthly. This income is recognised as revenue and may be partially rebated to cardholders in the form of cashback or rewards points — the mechanism that funds loyalty programmes. The relationship between gross interchange received and net interchange retained after rewards cost is a central profitability metric for any issuer.
European Union — MIF Regulation 2015/751. Regulation (EU) 2015/751 of the European Parliament and of the Council, in force since 8 June 2015 with caps applying from December 2015 (debit) and June 2016 (credit), imposes hard caps on interchange fees for consumer card transactions within the EEA. Debit card transactions are capped at 0.20% of the transaction value; consumer credit card transactions are capped at 0.30%. These caps apply per transaction and cannot be circumvented through bilateral arrangements. The Regulation also mandates unbundling — acquirers must separately identify the interchange component in merchant statements — and prohibits honour-all-cards rules that would compel merchants to accept all card products of a given brand. Oversight is distributed across national competent authorities, with the European Banking Authority (EBA) providing coordination. The caps apply to domestic and cross-border intra-EEA transactions but not to transactions where either the issuer or acquirer is located outside the EEA.
United Kingdom — post-Brexit continuity. The UK retained the MIF Regulation's consumer card caps after the end of the Brexit transition period through the EU (Withdrawal) Act 2018. The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) supervises compliance. However, Visa and Mastercard increased cross-border interchange rates on UK-issued cards for EEA transactions from 2022, exploiting the fact that UK issuers no longer benefit from intra-EEA status — a development under ongoing PSR scrutiny as of 2026.
United States — Durbin Amendment. Section 1075 of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (2010), commonly known as the Durbin Amendment, directed the Federal Reserve to regulate debit card interchange for card issuers with assets exceeding USD 10 billion. The resulting Regulation II (12 CFR Part 235) caps debit interchange at USD 0.21 plus 0.05% of the transaction value, plus a USD 0.01 fraud-prevention adjustment. Crucially, issuers with assets below USD 10 billion are exempt — a carve-out that significantly benefits fintech and community bank card programmes operating as small issuers.
Commercial cards — the unregulated frontier. Both EU and US frameworks explicitly exclude commercial cards (corporate cards, business credit cards, fleet cards, purchasing cards) from interchange caps. Commercial card interchange rates can reach 1.5%–2.5% or higher, making them substantially more lucrative for issuers than consumer products. This is a primary reason why expense card and card-issuing programmes targeting SMEs and corporates are economically attractive for programme managers and their BIN sponsors.
For fintechs, neobanks, and programme managers building card products, interchange is typically the primary or sole revenue stream in the early phases of a programme's lifecycle. Modelling it accurately is therefore a foundational commercial discipline, not an afterthought.
The starting input is the applicable interchange rate schedule. Under a BIN sponsorship arrangement, the fintech's programme rides on the issuing licence and BIN of a licensed bank or e-money institution. The interchange revenue generated flows to the BIN sponsor, which then passes a negotiated share — the interchange revenue share — to the programme manager. The revenue share percentage is a key commercial variable in BIN sponsorship negotiations and typically ranges from 50% to 85% of gross interchange depending on programme volume, card type, and the sponsor's cost base.
The blended interchange rate across a portfolio depends heavily on the programme's spend mix. A programme where cardholders transact predominantly at supermarkets (low MCC rates) will generate less interchange per pound of spend than one oriented towards travel, entertainment, or B2B supply-chain payments (higher MCC rates). Fintechs building financial models should segment their projected spend by MCC cluster and apply the corresponding network rates to each bucket rather than applying a single average.
Card-not-present versus card-present ratios matter significantly too. A programme serving e-commerce-heavy users will attract structurally higher rates, but must also account for higher fraud-related chargebacks and associated costs. Geographic scope also affects blended rates: cross-border transactions, particularly when routed through international scheme rails, can attract different rate tiers than domestic transactions.
For programmes operating in the EU under the MIF Regulation, consumer debit programme economics are tight: 0.20% gross interchange, less the revenue share to the sponsor, less fraud and operational costs, leaves a narrow margin that must be supplemented by foreign exchange revenue, premium account fees, or value-added services. This is why programme design decisions — whether to issue debit, prepaid, or (where permitted) credit; consumer or commercial; domestic or pan-European — have direct P&L consequences that flow back through interchange mechanics.
Commercial card programmes targeting SMEs and corporate clients remain particularly interesting. The absence of a regulatory cap means that a well-structured B2B expense management or accounts-payable card programme can generate interchange yields that are four to eight times those of a regulated consumer debit product — a structural advantage that has driven significant fintech investment in the segment since 2018.
Codego's infrastructure is purpose-built for programme managers and fintech businesses that need to design card products around predictable, optimised interchange economics. As a European Banking-as-a-Service provider with active BIN sponsorship relationships on both Visa and Mastercard, Codego enables clients to issue cards under either scheme — or both simultaneously — selecting the network whose interchange schedule best aligns with their target spend mix and customer segment. Full details are available on the BIN sponsorship glossary page.
Through the white-label card and card issuing programmes, Codego's clients retain a negotiated share of the interchange generated by their cardholders. Because Codego operates across both consumer and commercial card segments — including dedicated expense card and gift card programmes — clients can architect their product around the interchange category that best serves their revenue model: regulated consumer rates for mass-market programmes, or unregulated commercial rates for B2B propositions.
Virtual cards are available from day one of programme launch; physical cards follow within fifteen days. Crypto-funded cards with on-the-fly conversion generate interchange in the same way as fiat-funded products, giving clients in the digital-asset space access to the same interchange economics as traditional card issuers. The self-service portal allows programme managers to configure card controls, spend limits, and MCC restrictions without engineering effort — parameters that directly influence the spend mix and, by extension, the blended interchange yield. For clients building deeper infrastructure, the core banking and card processor layers provide the settlement and reconciliation rails required to track interchange flows at transaction level.