A Mastercard invoice is long, and most of it is codes. That is why few teams read it closely. Once you know how a line is built, it reads like any other bill: what was charged, how many times, at what rate and to which account.
This guide covers the invoice itself. For the bigger picture first, start with scheme fees, interchange and processing fees.
Where the invoice comes from
Mastercard bills its customers through the Mastercard Consolidated Billing System, usually shortened to MCBS. Billing runs in weekly cycles. A fee can recur daily, monthly or quarterly, but it reaches you inside one of those weekly cycles, charged to your ICA.
You find the invoices on Mastercard Connect, in the Pricing and Billing Resource Center. It holds the pricing guide for your region, the transaction detail behind each charge and a billing analytic tool that searches by ICA. If you do not have the app, your Connect security administrator can approve access.
The invoice itself is a summary. For a real check you want the detail behind it, exported to a spreadsheet or a database.
If you issue through a BIN sponsor or a processor, Mastercard bills them, not you. Your share reaches you on their invoice, often grouped or renamed. Ask your sponsor for the Mastercard lines for your ranges. You need them for every check below.
What each part of a line means
Every charge is a billing event: one fee, at one rate, for one kind of activity. Field names differ a little between reports, but every line carries the same information.
| Part | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| ICA | The customer ID the charge is billed to. A larger issuer often has several ICAs, and charges for one range can be billed to another ICA in the same group. |
| Service code | Two letters that group billing events by service. For example, AB is issuer authorization, DL is issuer cross-border and RP is reports. |
| Billing event ID | The code of the fee itself, such as 2RP5061. The service code sits inside it, so this one is a reports event. |
| Description | The name of the fee in the pricing guide. Several events can have similar names, so always match on the ID. |
| Quantity | What was counted: transactions, messages, cards, reports, or an amount of money for fees charged on volume. |
| Rate | The price per unit, a share of volume in basis points, or a flat amount. |
| Amount | Quantity times rate, in the billing currency. |
| Billing cycle | The week the charge was billed in. Corrections for earlier activity appear in later cycles. |
Three kinds of charges
Sorting the lines into three groups makes the invoice much easier to read.
- One-time fees, charged when something is set up, such as a new ICA or BIN.
- Fixed recurring fees, which arrive whatever your volumes: maintenance of active ranges, subscriptions to reports and services, connectivity.
- Activity fees, which follow your volumes: authorizations, clearing messages, cross-border transactions and fees charged in basis points of what your cards spend.
Credits and adjustments sit beside these: rebates, corrections and reversals of earlier charges. Keep them in view. A credit can hide a charge that should not have been there in the first place.
A routine to check it
- Take as many months of billing detail as you can, not one invoice. A single week cannot show you what recurs, what jumped or what appeared for the first time, and fees billed quarterly or once a year only show over a longer period.
- Put every line in one table with the same columns: cycle, ICA, service code, billing event ID, description, quantity, rate and amount.
- Total the period by service code, then by billing event, and sort by amount. Start your checks at the top, where a wrong rate costs the most.
- Look up each large event in the pricing guide for your region. Check that the rate you were billed matches the rate in force on that date, or the rate in your agreement if you negotiated one.
- Check quantities against your own numbers. Authorization and clearing counts come from your processor, and card and account counts from your card management system.
- List the fixed and subscription events and ask who in your team uses each one. Our guide to optional services goes through this step.
- Compare each cycle with the one before. Look for events that appear for the first time, amounts that double, and the same event billed twice for the same period.
- List the ICAs and BINs that carry charges. Any range with fees and no activity belongs on your list of dormant BINs and ICAs.
Where the invoice can mislead
A few patterns make the totals look right when they are not.
Similar names, different events
The same description can belong to more than one billing event, for example one per region or product, or an old and a new version of a fee. Match on the ID, never on the name.
Price changes during the year
Mastercard tells its customers about fee changes through regular announcements. A rate that was right in March can be wrong in May. Compare each cycle with the pricing in force at the time, not with today's guide.
Corrections in later cycles
An adjustment for earlier activity lands in the cycle where it was processed. Match each credit or debit to the charge it corrects, or a refund that never came will look as if it did.
Charges spread across ICAs
When several ICAs share billing, a total per ICA can hide which range caused a cost. Group by range as well as by ICA when the detail allows it.
What to do with what you find
Most findings fall into three kinds, and each has its own fix.
- A wrong charge, such as a rate or quantity that does not match, goes back to Mastercard as a billing inquiry. Give the billing event ID, the ICA, the cycles and your evidence. You can open a case on Mastercard Connect or go through your account manager.
- A service you no longer need gets canceled, through your account manager or the service's enrollment process. Check the notice period, then watch the next invoices to see the line stop.
- A fee caused by how your transactions are sent gets fixed at the source, with your processor. The fee stops when the cause does.
If you would rather have this done for you, that is what our scheme fee review does: your Visa and Mastercard invoices, one scheme or both, over the period you choose, read line by line, with the action that removes each fee you do not need.
This guide is general information, based on public sources and on how scheme billing commonly works, and it is not advice for your situation. Your agreement with Mastercard and the pricing guide for your region take precedence.