The Blog

April Rate Increases 2018 – The Real Story!

Every spring and every fall the association of banks get together to decide if they need to raise any credit card interchange rates or fees. You know the answer to that. It is always a resounding YES!   99% of all card processors get all their salivating executives together to decide how much to bump up the real increase to their merchants so they can have more profits.

This April the associations did not raise interchange rates, but the brands, Visa and MasterCard did. Their fees are usually passed through as separate fees on your merchant statement and do not affect interchange rates.

One of our processors recently raised everybody .05% on top of interchange rates and the real increase in brand fees will be passed on as well! We refused it for our entire portfolio.

What is your processor doing to you? You will be notified in fine print at the bottom of your merchant statement. Get a magnifying glass ready.

Here is the real, wholesale change for April.

“Visa will modify select tiers of the Fixed Acquirer Network Fee (FANF) for merchants with a Monthly Gross Sales Volume of greater than $199,999.99 per month. For monthly gross sales volume less than $200,000, the FANF fees will remain the same. “ In other words, if your monthly volume is less than $200,000 you are not affected.

“MasterCard will increase the acquirer brand volume fee from 0.12% to 0.13% for consumer credit and commercial credit transactions that are less than $1,000 USD, as well as all dual message system debit transactions.” This is a pass through fee from MasterCard.