Twice-Yearly Changes to Credit Card Processing Fee Structures Often Catch Merchants Off-Guard
Here's an overview of the changes put in place in April, 2019. Including one that can significantly increase a merchant's Interchange Fees ...
The April 2019 Changes:
Visa and Mastercard change the rules governing merchant processing fees twice per year: April and October.
At each interval, they enact numerous changes … most of which cause fee increases for merchants.
One recent change from Mastercard caused a tremendous increase in Interchange Fees on some transactions. This change takes even more money from the merchant, and puts it into the pocket of the bank that issued the credit card to their customer.
The full scope of the April 2019 change interval is characteristically complex. One fairly thorough overview can be found HERE.
Verisave is always happy to advise clients on these changes, and how they may affect their merchant accounts.
An Example from a Verisave Client:
Some of our clients process a large volume in exactly the classification of transaction that was hit hardest by this change. Fortunately, there are often other solutions that can be developed, bringing a comparable savings back in to the picture.
Here’s one example:
- Client takes a large volume of Mastercard payments
- The April 2019 Mastercard changes increased the Interchange
- The impact was likely to be $1.2 million in additional fees for this client
- Verisave was able to bring a solution that offset the additional fees by about $800k