Card fees are usually explained from the merchant's side. Seen from the issuer, the picture is different. This guide sorts the three main fee flows by who pays, who receives and who sets the price.
The three flows
| Fee | Who pays | Who receives | Set by | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Interchange | The acquirer | The issuer | Scheme rules, capped by regulators in some regions | Clearing and settlement reports |
| Scheme fees | The issuer, and the acquirer separately | Visa or Mastercard | The scheme's pricing and your agreement with it | The scheme's invoice |
| Processing fees | The issuer | Your processor | Your processor contract | The processor's invoice |
Interchange: income for the issuer
Interchange moves from the acquirer to the issuer on each purchase. For an issuer it is revenue. The schemes publish the rates, and in some regions regulators cap them. In the European Union, consumer card interchange is capped at 0.2% of the transaction for debit and 0.3% for credit (EU Regulation 2015/751). In the US, debit interchange is capped for issuers with $10 billion or more in assets (Regulation II).
Because rules set it, interchange leaves an issuer little to negotiate or correct line by line.
Scheme fees: what you pay Visa and Mastercard
Scheme fees are what the networks charge for using them. In the US they are called network fees. Issuers and acquirers each pay their own. On the issuing side they include:
- assessments on the volume your cards spend
- fees per authorization, clearing message and settlement
- fees on cross-border activity
- fixed fees for licenses, ICAs and BINs
- optional services, such as reports, fraud tools, tokens and account updating
- fees tied to how transactions are sent and answered
Each one arrives as a coded line on the scheme's invoice. There can be hundreds of them, and the schemes change them through regular announcements to their clients.
Public figures are rare, but two regulators have looked. Australia's central bank found that issuers there paid about A$310.7 million in net scheme fees in 2024/25, or 3.3 basis points of the value of their transactions: 4.6 for credit card issuers and 2.6 for debit (RBA, 2026). The UK Payment Systems Regulator found that Mastercard and Visa raised their core scheme and processing fees to acquirers by at least 25% since 2017 (PSR, 2025).
Processing fees: what you pay your processor
Your processor runs your card platform: authorizations, card management, clearing files and often the connection to the schemes. Its fees follow your contract, for example per card, per transaction, per service or as a monthly minimum.
Some processors and BIN sponsors also pass scheme fees on to you. When they do, those fees can sit on the processor's invoice under a few grouped lines. They are still scheme fees, and it is worth asking for the scheme lines behind them.
Why scheme fees deserve the closest look
Interchange is set by rules. Processing fees follow a contract you negotiated and can read. Scheme fees are different: there are many of them, they are coded, and they change during the year. Australia's central bank reported that "many PSPs and issuers reported significant difficulties estimating and reconciling scheme fees" (RBA, 2026).
That complexity is why errors and unused services can stay on an invoice for months. It is also what makes a line-by-line check worth doing.
Regulators are pushing for more transparency. The RBA expects Visa and Mastercard to publish Scheme Fee Roadmaps, designed with the industry, by 1 April 2027 (RBA, 2026). They cover Australia, but they show where scheme fee transparency is heading.
Where to start
If you have never read your scheme invoices line by line, start with our guides to the Mastercard invoice and the Visa invoice. They show where to find each invoice and how to read it.
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 the public sources it links to and on how card fees commonly work, and it is not advice for your situation. Your agreements with the schemes and your processor take precedence.