Interchange
Also called: Interchange fee, Wholesale rate
Quick definition: The wholesale fee a card-issuing bank charges every time their cardholder makes a purchase. It's roughly 70% of your total processing cost and not negotiable.
In plain English
Every credit card transaction has three fee layers: interchange (paid to the card-issuing bank), assessments (paid to Visa/Mastercard/Discover), and processor markup (paid to your merchant services provider).
Interchange is set by the card networks — Visa publishes their rate sheet quarterly — and is the same regardless of which processor you use. The reason your processing bill differs from your neighbor's is almost entirely markup, the only part anyone can compete on.
Example
Why it matters for your bill
FAQ
- •Definitions reviewed against current card-network and PCI SSC documentation.
- •Updated when card-network rules or fee structures change.
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