If you accept card payments, you pay interchange on every single transaction, whether you can see it on your statement or not. It’s the wholesale cost of a card payment, and it’s the number your processor would generally prefer you didn’t think about.

Here’s the plain-language version.

What interchange actually is

When a customer taps their card, the money doesn’t travel straight from their bank to yours. It moves through the card network (Visa, Mastercard, and the rest), and along the way the customer’s bank takes a cut. That cut is interchange.

Interchange rates are set by the card networks, published openly, and are the same for everyone. Your processor doesn’t control them, and neither do you. What varies is everything stacked on top.

Why the card in your customer’s hand matters

Interchange isn’t one number. It changes based on the type of card, how it’s presented, and what industry you’re in. A few real-world reference points:

  • A standard Visa debit card runs around 0.80%
  • A Visa Infinite card runs around 1.42%
  • A World Elite Mastercard runs around 1.50%
  • Corporate cards run around 1.70%

The premium cards cost more because those travel points and cash-back rewards have to be paid for by someone. That someone is the business accepting the card. And in Canada this matters more than most places: roughly 68% of transactions here are made on premium cards.

Where your processor fits in

Your processor’s job is to move the transaction and get paid for doing it. How they get paid is the part worth understanding, because there are two very different models.

Flat-rate pricing gives you one rate on everything, typically 2.9% + 30¢. Whether the card actually cost 0.80% or 1.70% at interchange, you pay the same. The gap between the real cost and your flat rate is the provider’s margin. On a standard debit card, that gap can be over two percentage points.

Interchange-plus pricing passes the actual interchange cost through to you, plus a fixed markup you agree to upfront. Your statement gets longer and more detailed, because you’re seeing the real numbers instead of a blended one.

Neither model is automatically right. Flat rate genuinely wins for lower-volume businesses, since dedicated merchant accounts carry fixed monthly costs that need enough volume to justify. The tipping point is generally around $30K per month in processing, though it shifts with your industry and card mix.

We’ve broken this comparison down in detail, including how to tell which side of the line you’re on, in our flat rate vs. interchange-plus guide.

What to do with this

You don’t need to memorize interchange tables. You need to know three things:

  1. Interchange is the same for everyone. Nobody gets a better wholesale rate. Anyone implying otherwise is marketing at you.
  2. Everything above interchange is negotiable. The markup, the monthly fees, the equipment costs. That’s where the actual differences between processors live.
  3. Your statement can tell you which model you’re on — if you can decode it. Most are built to make that hard.

That last part is where we come in. Our free payment audit goes through your statement line by line and shows you what you’re actually paying against what the transactions actually cost. The report is yours to keep, whatever you decide to do with it.