Free interchange
calculator.

How interchange actually works

Every time a cardholder swipes, taps, or enters a card online, your processor pays an interchange fee to the card-issuing bank. This fee is set by the card networks (Visa, Mastercard, Discover, Amex) and is non-negotiable by your processor — but the markup on top of it is where the real money is made, and where most merchants are overcharged.

Interchange is a two-dimensional rate card. One axis is the transaction type (card-present retail, keyed, card-not-present, recurring, small-ticket, large-ticket). The other axis is the card product — a no-rewards Visa consumer debit card might clear at 0.05% + $0.22, while a Visa Infinite travel rewards card for the same transaction clears at 2.10% + $0.10. The weighted average of your interchange depends entirely on your card mix, your transaction mix, and your average ticket.

Why "2.9% + $0.30" is usually bad math

Flat-rate pricing — the Stripe, Square, PayPal standard — is simple but expensive. You pay one blended rate whether the transaction cleared at 0.05% interchange (debit) or 2.70% (premium rewards). The processor pockets the difference on low-cost transactions, which for most e-commerce merchants is 40-55% of volume. A typical multi-brand operator processing $500k/month on 2.9%+$0.30 is overpaying by $3,500-$8,000 every single month versus true interchange-plus pricing. Over a year, that's a $50k-$100k tax on growth.

Interchange categories that matter for ecom operators

• CPS/e-commerce basic (Visa): 1.80% + $0.10 — your floor for most non-rewards CNP transactions.
• CPS/e-commerce preferred: 1.75% + $0.20 — drops if you meet AVS + auth data quality requirements.
• Commercial/corporate cards: 2.50% + $0.10 to 2.95% + $0.10 — every B2B sale.
• Premium consumer rewards (Visa Signature, Mastercard World Elite): 2.10-2.40% + $0.10 — now 35-55% of consumer CNP volume.
• Regulated debit (Durbin-covered): 0.05% + $0.22 — huge banks only; your true debit floor.
• Non-regulated debit: 1.55% + $0.04 to 1.65% + $0.15 — small-bank debit.

The pricing models compared

Flat-rate (Stripe/Square/PayPal): One rate, one fee. Easy to underwrite. Terrible unit economics if you're doing $50k+/month. The processor's margin expands as your mix shifts to lower-cost cards.

Tiered (Qualified / Mid-Qualified / Non-Qualified): The processor bucks transactions into tiers. "Non-qualified" downgrades are the trick — a rewards card that should cost 2.10% interchange gets bucketed into a 3.50% tier. The processor captures the entire downgrade penalty.

Interchange-plus (IC+): You pay actual interchange + actual assessments + a fixed markup (e.g. 0.25% + $0.08). Every transaction is transparently priced. If interchange was 0.80%, you pay 1.05%. If it was 2.40%, you pay 2.65%. There are no downgrades because there are no tiers.

Membership (Stax, Payment Depot): Pass-through interchange + flat monthly fee. Works for high-volume, low-brand-count operators. Breaks down when you run 5+ brands on separate accounts.

What this calculator assumes

The interchange calculator above uses published 2026 Visa/Mastercard rate schedules and blends them using current US ecom card-mix data. Rewards-card penetration is now ~55% of consumer credit. CNP transactions add Product 1/2 data requirements that affect the final category. Amex is priced separately on OptBlue at roughly 2.90% average for ecom — noticeably above Visa/MC for the same rewards tier. Debit ratios depend on merchant category; we default to a mid-funnel ecom blend but you can override every input.

Network assessments (Visa: 0.14%, Mastercard: 0.1375%, Discover: ~0.105%) apply on top of interchange. These aren't interchange technically — they're the networks' cut for running the rails — but every merchant pays them and no processor absorbs them. Our output line separates them so you can see the true wholesale cost floor.

Finding your markup

If you entered your current effective rate, we subtract true wholesale to reveal your processor's markup in basis points. Anything above 35-50 basis points (0.35-0.50%) on $250k+/month is high. Flat-rate pricing typically shows 80-180 bps of markup. Tiered pricing can show 150-300 bps after downgrades. IC+ at scale sits at 15-35 bps. Multi-brand operators consolidating 4-8 brands should expect to land in the 20-30 bps range.

When interchange optimization actually matters

Below $25k/month, flat-rate is usually fine — the operational cost of IC+ reconciliation isn't worth the savings. Between $25k-$100k/month, IC+ starts paying for itself but you need a processor that actually shows you the breakdown. Above $100k/month, every basis point compounds: 25 bps on $1M/month is $30k/year. Most multi-brand operators are leaving six figures on the table every year by running on flat-rate or tiered plans they set up when each brand was small.

Use the calculator above to get a real number for your specific mix. Then compare it to what you're actually paying on your merchant statement (look for the "effective rate" line). The gap is your negotiation leverage.