All of these transactions, however, come with a price. The credit card institution tacks on an interchange charge that the merchant or supplier must pay whenever customers swipe a credit or debit card, whether physically or digitally, on the internet. These small costs, often known as swipe fees, may add to huge budget busters for many large and small enterprises.
Interchange fees cover the expenses of accepting, processing, and approving card transactions. Many factors might impact the fee amount, making it difficult to estimate the precise amount of the costs.
We've put together this quick guide to explain interchange costs, the variables that influence them, and where you can search up interchange fees per card network.
What are interchange fees?
When a customer or a business purchases products or services from a merchant or supplier using a credit/debit card, the credit card company charges the merchant selling the commodity or service an interchange fee (or rate). Credit card costs are higher than debit card fees, yet they only account for a small portion of the purchase price.
Financial services businesses adopt these swipe fees to earn revenue and as a "buffer" or hedge on accepting the short-term credit risk when a client borrows money from the financial institution to buy anything. Other costs, such as credit fraud and chargebacks, are also covered by the fees.
How are interchange fees calculated?
Interchange fees are calculated using various criteria, but financial institutions base them on financial risk statistics and the expenses of processing and moving money, among other things. These fees are determined by credit card networks such as Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover once or twice a year.
Recently, Visa and MasterCard announced interchange fee figures. If you check Visa or MasterCard’s interchange fees, you'll see that the final (single) interchange price you pay is made up of many interchange fees.
Every consumer transaction you process through your website incurs a cost from credit card networks like Visa and MasterCard, payment gateways and processors, card-issuing banks, and your company bank account. It's a percentage charge depending on the overall transaction amount, and it's typically included on your payment processor's invoice as a single, combined number. It becomes difficult for merchants to pay these fees since the sum they must pay usually varies depending on certain transaction circumstances. The following are the many factors that will influence the charge amount:
Card type
Interchange fees vary depending on the kind of card and the financial institution issuing it. Debit cards offer cheaper fees than credit cards due to a lesser chance of fraud. Interchange costs on rewards cards might be greater than on regular cards.
Card network
Interchange costs vary depending on the type of company and its size, such as grocery stores vs. boutique gift shops. Interchange fee charges are also affected by the size of the firm. Large corporations, for example, may be able to negotiate cheaper interchange fees with financial institutions than small enterprises.
Transaction type
How the transaction was completed is another factor that influences interchange costs. Was it purchased through a cash register, mail order, or online?
Card-present vs. card-not-present - Card-present (CP) transactions have a reduced risk of fraud than card-not-present (CNP) transactions, resulting in lower interchange rates (i.e., online or digital payments).
Domestic vs. cross-border payments - It's a domestic transaction if the cardholder's bank is located in the same nation as your company. And it's typically less expensive than cross-border transactions if the card-issuing bank and your company are not located in the same country.
What are the average interchange fees companies charge?
Interchange costs in Europe are typically roughly 0.3 - 0.4% of the overall transaction value. It is 2% in the United States. Card schemes determine interchange fees, which you cannot bargain with. Card networks also regularly adjust the rate rates; for example, MasterCard and Visa announce new rates every April and October. Today, the best approach to determine actual costs is to visit the card scheme's website.
Difference between interchange++(plus-plus) and blended prices
Interchange++ (Interchange Plus Plus) and blended pricing are the most common pricing structures for card transactions. The main distinction between the two is transparency.
Interchange ++(plusplus)
You may thoroughly analyse the three-card payment processing costs you learned about before using Interchange++. The interchange charge, the card scheme fee, and the acquirer markup fee are all fees you must pay. You're only charged the actual interchange price, which can be cheaper than if it were set because interchange fees vary based on various circumstances.
Blended pricing
Using a blended pricing model, you'll be charged the average processing cost plus a set markup fee. The markup charged for each transaction is the same in this situation, and you can't see how expenses are distributed. It's simpler to comprehend, but it's not transparent. There's no way to tell if decreased exchange rates save you money.
Wrapping up
Interchange fees have become a significant financial factor for many businesses, whether small businesses or giant corporations, with many screaming foul. You might be concerned that interchange fees would eat into your revenues, but the advantages of accepting additional online payment methods outweigh the expenses of interchange fees. In short, you could attempt things like pushing people to use specific card types or shopping in person. Still, these minor tweaks will gradually detract from the customer experience and turn off potential and current customers.
You'd be better off looking for alternative methods to save costs in your company. Allowing clients to pay with credit or debit cards is critical for increasing customer happiness, conversions, and brand loyalty, regardless of the size of your business or the items you offer.
Out of the five companies, Mastercard received the largest fine of £31.56 million. The other four companies are allpay, Advanced Payment Solution, Prepaid Financial Services, and Sulion.
The UK regulator said the five firms broke competition law by agreeing not to compete or steal each other’s customers on prepaid cards offered to vulnerable people on welfare payments via local authorities. The cartel meant that the card’s recipients could have missed out on lower priced or better quality products, the PSR said.
Back in March 2021, the PSR had announced plans to fine the five companies in preliminary findings. On Tuesday, the regulator said it had concluded the investigation. All the parties in question have settled and have admitted to breaking the law.
“This investigation and the significant fines we have imposed send a clear message that the PSR has zero tolerance for cartel behaviour,” said Chris Hemsley, managing director of the PSR.
"We will intervene and enforce the law strictly to ensure there is effective competition in payments markets. This case is particularly serious because the illegal cartel behaviour meant there was less competition and choice for local authorities. This means they may have missed out on cheaper or better-quality products which were used by some of the most vulnerable in society.”
The move marks the first international of PayPal’s crypto product, which was first launched last October in the US. Its crypto feature allows customers to buy or sell bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ethereum, or litecoin with just £1. Additionally, customers are also able to track real-time crypto prices and access educational content on the market.
The extension of the service to the UK will rely on the New York regulated digital currency company Paxos and PayPal has confirmed that it has engaged with all relevant British regulators to launch its crypto service.
Despite ongoing concerns regarding crypto’s volatility, consumer protection and the potential for money laundering issues, many major companies including Tesla, Mastercard, and Facebook have been opening up to crypto in recent months. PayPal is one of the many large finance firms choosing to embrace the unregulated world of crypto. The move by the online payments giants comes as Bitcoin hit $50,000 on Sunday, reaching a more than 3-month high.
On the back of last week’s news that PayPal decidedly pulled out of the alliance backing Libra, Facebook’s new cryptocurrency project, Mastercard, Visa, eBay, Stripe and Mercado Pago have also announced their withdrawal from Libra.
Finance Monthly has heard from Martha Bennett, VP & Principal Analyst at Forrester, who had this says this was to be expected.
This wasn’t a surprise, and not just because PayPal announced a few days earlier that it wasn’t going to sign up to the Libra Association at this time. As I (and others) also pointed out during the summer, none of the 27 Libra members announced in July had actually signed any binding contracts – it was letters of intent; in other words, companies were keeping their options open. With the first session of Libra’s governing council looming (today), it was make-or-break time in terms of making an actual commitment.
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As the regulatory and government backlash in the US and around the world proved, the Libra proposal not only proved controversial, but there was also far too little detail available to come up with meaningful judgements. Despite protestations to the contrary (i.e. Facebook only being one of many organisations within Libra, represented by its subsidiary Calibra), Facebook has been the driving force behind Libra, and with David Marcus, very much remains a public face of Libra. This in turn heightened the scrutiny of Libra, with concerns not only raised by FS regulators but also privacy and competition authorities. There was always potential reputational risk associated with participation in Libra; the degree of the backlash, combined with Libra’s/Facebook’s somewhat unconvincing efforts at entering into the dialog with regulators and the continued absence of details around key aspects of Libra’s functioning and governance (including how regulatory compliance was going to be achieved), clearly proved too much.
I wouldn’t write off the initiative yet, but the Libra Association’s work has become much, much harder.
Will Libra survive? I wouldn’t write off the initiative yet, but the Libra Association’s work has become much, much harder. Given that the key concerns from PayPal and the other payments firms were around the lack of meaningful detail around regulatory compliance, a real step change is needed here. The recent statements from David Marcus and spokespeople from the Libra Association have continued to be thin on detail. There’s also the matter of tone; for example, there’s not much point in reiterating that Libra won’t pose systemic risk – if regulators and governments have concluded that it does, a more comprehensive and in-depth response is called for.
There’s been a lot of talk around the intervention on the part of the two US Senators writing to payment networks, and what impact that had. Whether or not those letters were appropriate is a separate discussion. In my view, the companies in question would have pulled out anyway, for the same reason PayPal did: insufficient visibility on how Libra was really going to come to grips with compliance, and the associated risk of reputational damage (as highlighted before), and potentially worse (e.g. impact on those organisations’ relationships with regulators).
But according to James Butland, VP European Banking at international payments platform Airwallex, this is changing.
Innovative solutions and more customer centric business banking platforms are on the rise, and, as a result, SMEs are moving away from their current banks in their droves. This is highlighted by the UK’s Current Account Switch Service reporting that there were 17,687 business account switches using the service during Q2 of this year, compared to just 8,000 switches during the same period last year.
Clearly, SMEs are hungry for new services that help them to manage their money more effectively, and with Brexit and a fluctuating currency potentially causing issues, it couldn’t come sooner.
World changing SME banking
The need for services that better meet the demands of businesses has seen payment fintechs such as Accelerate, Square and Monzo partner with the likes of Mastercard, eBay and Visa to provide more up to date technology in the B2B banking world. These innovations are aimed at speeding up payments and helping SMEs to compete in an increasingly globalised and competitive economy.
Innovation within international payments has also seen similar developments. This is largely due to the opaque nature of current FX practices. A new paper from the European Central Bank recently revealed that banks across Europe have overcharged SMEs for foreign exchange services, and have earned hundreds of millions of euros each year, at the expense of their small corporate customers. These SMEs have often been presented with misleading exchange rates and secret charges by banks, while unfairly being offered lower exchange rates compared to larger businesses at the same time.
This is a big issue. Particularly as 232,000 of UK SMEs exported to overseas markets last year, representing 10% of the country's small and medium-sized businesses. It’s why companies such as Airwallex, through our Global Accounts and FX capability, is helping SMEs to break through murky FX practices, and access exchange rates that have been typically only available to large corporates. Customers can be shown correct and clear rates and can act as a local in new markets. These new platforms, services, and in some cases new banking entities, are removing the complexities of exporting overseas and therefore allowing SMEs to focus more on growing their business.
Partnership benefits for SMEs
SMEs desperately need these developments because previous legacy payments and slow banking processes are not only significantly slowing down the speed at which they can operate at but are also ultimately limiting their growth. The transparency available now to help SMEs understand FX rates and expenses alongside more innovation within payments and banking solutions will prove vital for smaller businesses going forward. This will provide them with confidence over their margins and allow them to grow through enabling them to provide far swifter payments, both nationally and internationally.
According to new research from leading payment provider MasterCard, biometric technology is set to become an integral part of all online shopping, as tighter regulations concerning online fraud are introduced. For instance, new EU regulations come into effect next September, which will increase the number of transactions subject to two factor authentication, known as “Strong Customer Authentication” (SCA).
MasterCard has been a board member of The Fast IDentity Online (FIDO) Alliance since 2013. FIDO is a global non-profit trade association developing technical standards and certification programmes for simpler, stronger authentication.
Andrew Shikiar, CMO of The FIDO Alliance, comments: “MasterCard is spot on in its assessment; the use of passwords is woefully outdated as a means of online authentication. The problem has long been overreliance on yesterday’s approach and a reluctance to embrace the ways in which technology has transformed both our habits and the options available to us. It’s encouraging to see that the tide is finally turning, thanks in large part to evolving regulatory requirements in response to escalating levels of online fraud. Far more secure methods of authentication, including biometrics, are now readily available at our fingerprints, which can greatly improve security and privacy for consumers accessing online services, while improving the user experience into the bargain.
“As the range of activities we undertake online using mobile devices continues to rise, the more sensitive transactions – such as payments and money transfers – can be facilitated using device-enabled strong authentication. However, its success hinges on the industry’s ability to offer this at internet scale. Biometric modalities deliver a number of user experience benefits, but not all biometric systems are built on secure, tried-and-true public key cryptography. Biometric authentication relies on matching an input to a held piece of original data, and how that matching process is managed - and in particular how identifying data is stored - raises a host of security and privacy questions. For instance, if data is held in an online central database, a breach of that data could be catastrophic.
“On the contrary, a decentralised approach allows users to authenticate by using a private key on their personal device to sign a cryptographic authentication challenge from the service provider’s server. With this approach, the service provider only stores a public key associated with that user’s account, which cannot be leveraged by a hacker having infiltrated a database. This is one of many reasons why leading service providers like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Dropbox and many more have deployed FIDO Authentication to protect hundreds of millions of consumers around the world, while reducing the outdated reliance on passwords.”
(Source: The FIDO Alliance)
