Interchange fees: what they are and what a high-risk offer passes on to you

What interchange is, and who receives it

Every card payment involves two banks: the one that issued the customer’s card and the one that accepts the payment for the merchant (the acquirer), often reached through a processor, agent or payment facilitator. Interchange is the fee set by the card network that the issuer receives on each purchase.

Visa’s US interchange tables, edition of 24 October 2026, describe it as a transfer fee between financial institutions and say plainly that merchants do not pay interchange reimbursement fees. Merchants pay a merchant discount to their own financial institution, which can cover a range of processing services and is typically a percentage rate per transaction. The tables add that the fees are paid to cardholder financial institutions.

Interchange is set by the network’s published tables, not by your provider. What your provider sets is everything it adds on top, and how it shows interchange to you.

The three layers inside a card price

A flat rate folds all three layers into one percentage. An interchange-plus offer passes interchange through and adds a markup, so the first layer moves with your card mix. Zolution’s guide to interchange-plus vs flat-rate pricing works through a comparison of the two.

What sets the interchange on a sale

Visa’s tables do not have one interchange rate. They set different rates by the type of card (debit, prepaid, consumer credit tiers, business cards), by whether the card was present, by the merchant’s segment for some programmes (for example travel, restaurants, insurance or utilities), and by whether the transaction meets the requirements of a fee programme. A transaction that does not qualify falls to a higher rate.

The tables in the 24 October 2026 edition contain no rate category called high risk. Being treated as high risk by a provider does not, by itself, move the interchange line; it shows up in the provider’s markup, reserve, payout timing and other terms. How transactions are submitted can also move the interchange on online sales: Visa lists card-not-present incentives of 0.05%, 0.10% or 0.15% off consumer credit rates for transactions that meet its programme requirements and use tokens or its Digital Commerce Authentication Program, and those incentives require that qualification.

Scroll the table to see all columns.

On the same $100 online sale, the qualified and non-qualified credit rates differ by $1.26 of interchange before the provider adds anything. If your offer passes interchange through, that difference reaches your statement; if it is a flat rate, the provider has priced it in.

Debit cards: the federal cap and what issuers actually receive

Debit interchange is the one part set by federal rule. Regulation II, as shown in the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations on 9 November 2026, says the interchange a covered issuer receives on a debit transaction may be no more than 21 cents plus 5 basis points (0.05%) of the transaction’s value (12 CFR 235.3), and issuers that, with their affiliates, hold less than $10 billion in assets are exempt (12 CFR 235.5). The Federal Reserve Board’s Regulation II page lists a proposal to lower that cap; the regulation’s text opened on the same day still sets the figures above.

The Board also publishes what debit issuers actually received. Its figures for 2024, across all debit networks: an average of $0.23 per covered transaction (0.47% of the average transaction value of $48.95) and $0.51 per exempt transaction (1.21% of $42.27), or $0.34 (0.73%) across both. These are averages over all debit purchases, not the rate on any one merchant’s sales.

What to check in a high-risk offer

• Is interchange passed through at cost, or included in a flat rate? If it is passed through, ask to see it as its own line on the statement.
• Are card-network fees passed through separately, included in the markup, or both? The same fee should not be charged twice.
• If the offer is a flat rate, does it change for transactions that do not qualify, for business cards or for cards issued outside the United States? Ask whether any surcharge applies to those.
• What estimated all-in rate does the provider give for your expected card mix, and what basis did it use?
• Keep reserves, payout timing and termination terms beside the price: they are separate from interchange and can change what an offer costs you.

In Zolution, each proposal states whether it is a flat rate or interchange plus a markup, and a markup is never shown as if it were the total. Offer terms are provider-declared and the provider decides. Zolution Standard membership is free; Zolution processes no payments, holds no funds and approves nobody.

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