Average interchange rates, and how this calculator blends them
Every blended figure behind the interchange-plus column, with the schedule it came from.
The interchange-plus column of the credit card processing fee calculator is built on a blended interchange rate plus whatever markup you enter. Interchange is what the card networks pay the card-issuing bank out of each sale; it is set by Visa and Mastercard rather than by your processor, and it varies by card type, by card programme and by whether the card was present. A single blended figure is therefore an average, not a rate anybody is literally charged.
There are six of them here because two things change it: how your sales split between in person and online, and whether you qualify for Visa's Small Merchant Fee Program. Each figure below says which schedule it came from, what was read off it, and which parts of it are judgement rather than measurement.
Under the standard interchange rates
Mostly in person
A representative blended interchange of 1.14% of volume plus $0.16 per transaction.
Card-present blend derived from the Visa U.S.A. Interchange Reimbursement Fees schedule, rates effective 18 April 2026, and the Mastercard 2026-2027 U.S. Region Interchange Programs and Rates, effective 17 April 2026 — both read from Internet Archive captures of the publishers' own document URLs, because usa.visa.com and mastercard.com return HTTP 403 to a direct request; retrieved 2026-08-04. Base programs only (Visa Product 1 and 2, Mastercard Merit I and Merit III Base): the cheaper volume-threshold tiers start at 19.2 million transactions and $1.08 billion of annual volume, which no small business reaches. Weighted 47% consumer debit, 45% consumer credit and 8% commercial by value, with the regulated-debit share (64.3% of value) measured by the Federal Reserve's 2023 Regulation II report to Congress. That comes to 1.1447% before rounding, plus $0.1605 per transaction. Its debit component, 0.3532% plus $0.1929 per transaction, works out at 0.770% of value at the Fed's own measured $46.26 average debit ticket, against the 0.73% the Fed measures across all US debit — close, but not a like-for-like check: the Fed's figure also contains supermarket and fuel programmes that pull it down and a share of card-not-present volume that pushes it up. Checked 2026-08-04.
Judgement, not measured data: the card mix behind this figure is not all measured. Commercial cards are weighted at 8% of value, cut from the 16% the card networks disclose, because fleet cards, corporate travel and accounts-payable virtual cards never reach a small merchant's till — that is the least evidenced weight here and is worth about ±0.03 percentage points on its own. The split of consumer credit across non-rewards, mainstream rewards, premium and super-premium cards (8-40-37-15 by value) is published by nobody, and the 60:40 Visa-to-Mastercard split is an assumption too, because Mastercard discloses no US volume level. Together those are worth roughly ±0.10 percentage points on the rate above.
Mostly online
A representative blended interchange of 1.61% of volume plus $0.15 per transaction.
Card-not-present blend derived from the Visa U.S.A. Interchange Reimbursement Fees schedule, rates effective 18 April 2026, and the Mastercard 2026-2027 U.S. Region Interchange Programs and Rates, effective 17 April 2026 — both read from Internet Archive captures of the publishers' own document URLs, because usa.visa.com and mastercard.com return HTTP 403 to a direct request; retrieved 2026-08-04. Base programs only (Visa Product 1 and 2, Mastercard Merit I and Merit III Base): the cheaper volume-threshold tiers start at 19.2 million transactions and $1.08 billion of annual volume, which no small business reaches. It comes to 1.6064% before rounding, plus $0.1486 per transaction. Regulated debit is the Regulation II cap of 0.05% plus $0.22, which appears identically in both schedules. Visa's Card Not Present Incentive discounts are deliberately not applied, so a merchant using network tokens pays a little less than this rather than a little more. Checked 2026-08-04.
Judgement, not measured data: this figure assumes remote sales split 38% debit, 53% credit and 9% commercial by value, on the reasoning that people reach for a credit card more often online. No current primary source publishes a remote-versus-in-person split by card type — the Federal Reserve's 2025 Payments Study release is top-line only — so that mix is reasoned, not measured. It is worth roughly ±0.15 percentage points on the rate above: a 45-47-8 mix instead would take about 11 basis points off it.
A mix of both
A representative blended interchange of 1.38% of volume plus $0.16 per transaction.
Half of sales value card-present and half card-not-present. The rate is the value-weighted average of the card-present blend (1.1447% before rounding) and the card-not-present blend (1.6064%), giving 1.3756%; the per-transaction fee is weighted on the transaction counts that split implies — 61.4% in person and 38.6% online, at blended tickets of $55.43 and $88.06 — giving $0.1559. Both blends come from the Visa U.S.A. Interchange Reimbursement Fees schedule, rates effective 18 April 2026, and the Mastercard 2026-2027 U.S. Region Interchange Programs and Rates, effective 17 April 2026 — both read from Internet Archive captures of the publishers' own document URLs, because usa.visa.com and mastercard.com return HTTP 403 to a direct request; retrieved 2026-08-04. Checked 2026-08-04.
Judgement, not measured data: the 50-50 split between in-person and online sales is what this option means, not a measurement of your business. Half of it is the online blend, whose card mix is itself assumed (38% debit, 53% credit, 9% commercial, with no primary source for a remote-versus-in-person split), so roughly ±0.08 percentage points of that figure's ±0.15 carries through here. The other half is the in-person blend, which rests on its own unpublished weights — an 8% commercial share, the credit product-tier mix and a 60:40 Visa-to-Mastercard split — carrying roughly another ±0.05 of its ±0.10.
Under Visa's Small Merchant Fee Program
Mostly in person
A representative blended interchange of 1.09% of volume plus $0.16 per transaction.
The card-present blend rebuilt with the Visa Small Merchant Fee Program rates, in the same Visa schedule, substituted for Visa's standard consumer credit rates; the Mastercard component and the debit and commercial components are unchanged, because the programme is Visa's alone, from the Visa U.S.A. Interchange Reimbursement Fees schedule, rates effective 18 April 2026, and the Mastercard 2026-2027 U.S. Region Interchange Programs and Rates, effective 17 April 2026 — both read from Internet Archive captures of the publishers' own document URLs, because usa.visa.com and mastercard.com return HTTP 403 to a direct request; retrieved 2026-08-04. It comes to 1.0853% before rounding, against 1.1447% at the standard rates. Visa's eligibility test is no more than $280,000 of gross Visa consumer credit sales over the preceding twelve months. The programme moves the percentage rates only — Visa's $0.10 per-transaction credit fee is the same under it, so the per-transaction figure does not move. The discount rests on the one small-merchant pair transcribed from the schedule (card-present Traditional Rewards, 1.65% falling to 1.43%): its 0.22 points are applied uniformly across all four of Visa's card-present consumer credit tiers, so three of those four tiers are extrapolated rather than transcribed. Checked 2026-08-04.
Judgement, not measured data: the card mix behind this figure is not all measured. Commercial cards are weighted at 8% of value, cut from the 16% the card networks disclose, because fleet cards, corporate travel and accounts-payable virtual cards never reach a small merchant's till — that is the least evidenced weight here and is worth about ±0.03 percentage points on its own. The split of consumer credit across non-rewards, mainstream rewards, premium and super-premium cards (8-40-37-15 by value) is published by nobody, and the 60:40 Visa-to-Mastercard split is an assumption too, because Mastercard discloses no US volume level. Together those are worth roughly ±0.10 percentage points on the rate above.
Mostly online
A representative blended interchange of 1.51% of volume plus $0.15 per transaction.
The card-not-present blend rebuilt with the Visa Small Merchant Fee Program rates, in the same Visa schedule, substituted for Visa's standard consumer credit rates; the Mastercard component and the debit and commercial components are unchanged, because the programme is Visa's alone, from the Visa U.S.A. Interchange Reimbursement Fees schedule, rates effective 18 April 2026, and the Mastercard 2026-2027 U.S. Region Interchange Programs and Rates, effective 17 April 2026 — both read from Internet Archive captures of the publishers' own document URLs, because usa.visa.com and mastercard.com return HTTP 403 to a direct request; retrieved 2026-08-04. It comes to 1.5086% before rounding, against 1.6064% at the standard rates. Visa's eligibility test is no more than $280,000 of gross Visa consumer credit sales over the preceding twelve months. The programme moves the percentage rates only, so the per-transaction figure does not move. This figure is the less firmly sourced of the two: no card-not-present Small Merchant Fee Program rate was transcribed from the schedule at all, so the discount behind it — about 0.31 points off each of Visa's card-not-present consumer credit tiers — is extrapolated from the one small-merchant pair transcribed from the schedule (card-present Traditional Rewards, 1.65% falling to 1.43%), and is not a published card-not-present rate. Checked 2026-08-04.
Judgement, not measured data: this figure assumes remote sales split 38% debit, 53% credit and 9% commercial by value, on the reasoning that people reach for a credit card more often online. No current primary source publishes a remote-versus-in-person split by card type — the Federal Reserve's 2025 Payments Study release is top-line only — so that mix is reasoned, not measured. It is worth roughly ±0.15 percentage points on the rate above: a 45-47-8 mix instead would take about 11 basis points off it.
A mix of both
A representative blended interchange of 1.30% of volume plus $0.16 per transaction.
Half of sales value card-present and half card-not-present, both at the Small Merchant Fee Program rates, blended exactly as the standard mixed figure is: the rate is the value-weighted average of 1.0853% and 1.5086%, giving 1.2970% before rounding, and the per-transaction fee is weighted on the same 61.4% in person and 38.6% online transaction-count split, giving $0.1559 — unchanged, because the programme moves percentage rates and leaves the fixed per-transaction fees alone. Both blends come from the Visa U.S.A. Interchange Reimbursement Fees schedule, rates effective 18 April 2026, and the Mastercard 2026-2027 U.S. Region Interchange Programs and Rates, effective 17 April 2026 — both read from Internet Archive captures of the publishers' own document URLs, because usa.visa.com and mastercard.com return HTTP 403 to a direct request; retrieved 2026-08-04. Visa's eligibility test is no more than $280,000 of gross Visa consumer credit sales over the preceding twelve months. Both also inherit an extrapolation: the whole discount rests on the one small-merchant pair transcribed from the schedule (card-present Traditional Rewards, 1.65% falling to 1.43%), and no card-not-present small-merchant rate was transcribed at all, so the card-not-present half in particular is inferred rather than read off the schedule. Checked 2026-08-04.
Judgement, not measured data: the 50-50 split between in-person and online sales is what this option means, not a measurement of your business. Half of it is the online blend, whose card mix is itself assumed (38% debit, 53% credit, 9% commercial, with no primary source for a remote-versus-in-person split), so roughly ±0.08 percentage points of that figure's ±0.15 carries through here. The other half is the in-person blend, which rests on its own unpublished weights — an 8% commercial share, the credit product-tier mix and a 60:40 Visa-to-Mastercard split — carrying roughly another ±0.05 of its ±0.10.
How to read these
They are representative blended averages, not a live feed. The networks update their schedules a few times a year, historically in April and October, and both plans in the calculator are costed from the same figure — so a small drift moves the two columns together rather than changing which one wins.
If you have a statement in front of you, your own interchange line beats any average on this page. Reading a processing statement shows where to find it, and flat rate vs. interchange-plus explains why only one of the two pricing structures exposes it to you at all.