Current Interchange Rates, The Actual Tables and Why Most Businesses Never Qualify for the Best Ones

Tiered (Bundled) Pricing: The Great Obscurer

Instead of passing interchange through at cost and charging a flat markup (interchange-plus), processors bundle all 300+ interchange categories into three artificial tiers: “qualified,” “mid-qualified,” and “non-qualified.” The processor decides which transactions fall into each tier, and they set the tier rates. Qualified typically routes the cheapest cards. Non-qualified catches everything else, at a rate the processor sets with no transparency to you whatsoever. A rewards card that should land at 1.95% + $0.10 gets lumped into “non-qualified” at 3.50%, and the processor keeps the spread.

↑ Impact: Processors routinely add 0.50% – 1.50% above actual interchange on tiered pricing

Downgrade Engineering

Some processors configure terminals or software in ways that trigger downgrades, delayed batch settlements, missing data fields, disabled AVS settings. Maybe it’s intentional. Maybe it’s a careless setup that was never corrected. The outcome is the same either way: you pay more. Every downgrade increases the gap between the interchange floor and the tiered rate the merchant pays. On a tiered pricing model, that additional spread flows directly to the processor, and whether the cause is negligence or intent, there is little incentive on their end to fix something that’s working in their favor.

↑ Impact: A single misconfigured terminal setting can cost a business thousands per month

Incorrect MCC Assignment

Merchant Category Codes determine interchange eligibility, and for B2B companies, getting this right is one of the highest-value optimizations available. Many industries qualify for dramatically reduced interchange rates: healthcare providers, government contractors, utilities, nonprofits, and businesses that primarily accept corporate purchasing cards all have access to preferential rate tiers that standard retail merchants do not. The problem is setup. Processors frequently assign a generic MCC at onboarding and never revisit it. No alert fires. No one follows up. The merchant simply continues paying retail interchange rates on transactions that should be qualifying for something far lower, sometimes for years.

For B2B merchants specifically, the wrong MCC compounds the problem. It can simultaneously block access to lower interchange and prevent Level 2 and Level 3 data from qualifying correctly, a double penalty on every corporate card transaction. Maybe it was an honest mistake at setup. Maybe no one ever checked. Either way, the processor isn’t losing any sleep over it.

↑ Impact: Healthcare and government merchants commonly overpay by 0.75% – 1.50% on every transaction. B2B merchants with the wrong MCC can lose both the category rate advantage and Level 2/3 qualification simultaneously.

Flat-Rate Pricing: Simple But Expensive

Flat-rate processors like Square, Stripe, and PayPal charge 2.6% + $0.10 or similar on every transaction regardless of the actual interchange. A regulated debit card at 0.05% + $0.22? You’re still paying 2.6%. The difference goes entirely to the processor. Flat-rate pricing is convenient, but it is structurally designed to be expensive for any business with meaningful volume or a healthy mix of debit and low-cost credit cards.

↑ Impact: Businesses processing $100K+/month typically overpay $2,000 – $8,000 annually on flat-rate pricing

Junk Fees Disguised as Interchange Costs

Statements routinely include line items labeled “interchange adjustment,” “network access fee,” “system maintenance fee,” and similar, charged in addition to both interchange and the disclosed markup. These fees have no corresponding cost to the processor. They’re pure margin dressed in language that sounds like a pass-through cost. Without a forensic audit comparing your statement against the actual network fee schedules, they’re invisible.

This isn’t speculation. Two of the largest payment processors have paid out a combined $52 million after being accused of inflating interchange fees charged to merchants. Another top-5 bank-affiliated card processor has paid over $17 billion in fines, on the regulated side of its business. Consider that for a moment: $17 billion in regulatory penalties on the side of the business that is regulated. Credit card processing for merchants is not regulated. There are no government fines when a processor overbills a merchant. There are occasional lawsuit settlements, yes, quite a few, but no regulatory body with the authority or mandate to step in and defend your business.

And here’s what makes this uniquely dangerous: your credit card processor has the keys to your kingdom. They have direct access to your business bank account. They debit what they say you owe, and in most cases, no one is independently validating those numbers. If your processor tells you they are validating their own fees, ask them to take this quick quiz, weaudit.com/overbillings/, and find the $80,000 in overbillings hidden inside a real merchant statement. If they find it, you’re in good hands. If they can’t, you may want to take advantage of a free audit before your next billing cycle.

↑ Impact: On first-time audits, weAudit routinely finds that merchants have been overbilled by 40% or more above what they should have been paying, fees debited directly from their business bank account, month after month, unchallenged.