While minor adjustments have been made to the Interchange fees that issuing banks earn; the real story this spring are changes to fees earned by MasterCard and Visa. Beginning in April 2009, MasterCard will increase its Acquirer Access Fee for processing by 270% by raising this per transaction fee from $0.005 to $0.0185. In July 2009, Visa will follow suit by increasing its Acquiring Processing Fee 290% from $0.005 to $0.0195.

The MasterCard Acquirer Access Fee and the Visa Acquiring Processing Fee are set and paid to these publicly traded card companies. Merchants should be aware of these changes.  Merchants with small tickets will experience a greater impact from these changes.

Since 2005, Vantage has monitored, recorded and reported on Interchange changes impacting merchants.   Read more about the Spring 2009 Merchant Rate changes.