Four cards, one $100 purchase
A shopper spends $100 at a US store. How much of that goes to the bank that issued the card? It depends on the card. Visa’s US interchange schedule, effective October 24, 2026, gives these rates for an in-store retail sale.
| Card used | Visa rate | Paid to the issuer on $100 |
|---|---|---|
| Visa Infinite credit, spend qualified | 2.30% + $0.10 | $2.40 |
| Traditional Visa credit, retail performance threshold I | 1.43% + $0.10 | $1.53 |
| Debit card from an exempt, smaller issuer | 0.80% + $0.15 | $0.95 |
| Debit card from a regulated large issuer | 0.05% + $0.21 | $0.26, or $0.27 with the fraud adjustment |
A premium Visa Infinite card costs the merchant’s side about nine times what a big bank’s debit card does on the same basket. The shopper sees none of it.
The US caps debit only
That last row is the law at work. Big US issuers, those with $10 billion or more in assets, are held by the Federal Reserve’s Regulation II to 21 cents plus 0.05% of each debit payment. One that qualifies can add a cent for fraud prevention. Smaller issuers are exempt, and credit cards fall outside the rule.
The Fed’s 2024 averages, on a page last updated December 19, 2025, show the gap. Covered debit transactions brought issuers 23 cents on an average purchase of $48.95, or 0.47%. At the small, exempt issuers it was 51 cents on $42.27, more than twice the share at 1.21%.
Could the cap fall? The Fed proposed 14.4 cents plus 0.04% in 2023. Comments closed on May 12, 2024, and on November 10, 2026 the Federal Register still listed no final rule.
Europe and the UK
Europe capped credit cards as well. Its Interchange Fee Regulation, adopted in 2015, holds consumer debit cards to 0.2% of the payment under Article 3 and consumer credit cards to 0.3% under Article 4, as long as the payer’s and the payee’s providers are both inside the Union. The caps do not cover commercial cards or three-party schemes, where the scheme itself issues the cards and signs up the merchants.
Britain kept the same 0.2% and 0.3% for UK transactions. Online payments across the Channel are another matter. Shortly after Brexit, the Payment Systems Regulator says, Mastercard and Visa lifted the fee on card-not-present UK-EEA payments from 0.2% to 1.15% for debit and from 0.3% to 1.5% for credit. Citing litigation over its power to impose a price cap, the regulator shelved an interim cap in October 2025 to work on a longer-term one.
Interchange is not the merchant’s price
The usual mistake is to treat these rates as what a shop pays. Visa’s own document says “merchants do not pay interchange reimbursement fees” and pay a “merchant discount” to their financial institution instead, a rate that can bundle many processing services.
In the EU, the regulation makes the split visible. Article 12 requires the merchant’s provider to show the merchant service charge and the interchange fee separately for each card payment, or in aggregate if the merchant agrees.
Payments company Stripe’s US pricing page shows the bundled kind, 2.9% plus 30 cents for a domestic card, with “IC+ pricing” offered on custom plans, and 1.5% for stablecoin payments. Ask for an IC+ breakdown before comparing card fees with a stablecoin checkout.