What is interchange?
Per MasterCard, it is a “fee paid between the merchant’s bank and the cardholder’s bank that serves to balance costs in the payments system”. Interchange is a component of the merchant discount fee, which merchants pay to accept payment cards. Depending on your price plan, you may or may not see the breakdown of interchange fees within your overall cost of accepting credit card. See our post on What is interchange?

Benefits for these costs paid are fraud protection and faster payment, among others.
All interchange fees are posted on the respective Visa and MasterCard web sites for public viewing.

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Visa USA Interchange Rates
- Links to Visa web site page where you can download the latest rates.

MasterCard interchange rates- NOTE: This page is sometimes down because it is ‘too busy’.
MasterCard April 2010 interchange rates PDF download

Every merchant pays interchange, though the form that you pay it may vary. For some, the specific interchange is broken out on their statements. For others, interchange costs are buried within merchant discount.