Interchange Fees
Interchange Fees are transaction charges which card acquirers pay to card issuers in relation to any credit or debit card transactions which a merchant has accepted. The fees paid to the issuer cover the cost of providing cards to cardholders, fraud, bad debt costs and any other handling costs the issuer incurs when providing the service. In turn, the interchange fees paid by the acquirer are passed on to merchants as part of their monthly transaction processing charge.
Interchange fees in relation to the Visa and Mastercard card schemes are publicly available and can be accessed below.
Visa Interchange Fees by region and by country
Scheme Fees
Scheme Fees are the fees that acquirers pay to be members of a card scheme (e.g. Visa or Mastercard). As is the case with interchange, scheme fees are passed on to merchants as part of their monthly transaction processing charges.
A summary of interchange fees together with Visa and Mastercard scheme fees can be found in the following Barclaycard document: