Interchange++ pricing (said "interchange plus plus" and often shortened to IC++) is a way of charging merchants for card payments in which the bill for each transaction is split into three separate parts: the interchange paid to the card issuer, the scheme fees charged by the card network, and the acquirer's own margin. The first two are passed through at cost; only the third is set by the acquirer.
It is a more detailed form of interchange-plus pricing (IC+). The first "plus" is the scheme fees, shown on their own line; the second is the acquirer's markup. The name is most common in Europe, where card law requires acquirers to show these costs separately, and among payment service providers that serve large online merchants.
Interchange++ in plain terms
Think of a restaurant bill that lists three things: the cost of the food, the service charge the restaurant pays its booking platform, and the restaurant's own fee. Most restaurants show one total. A few show all three, so you can see exactly where your money goes and which part the restaurant could lower if it wanted to.
Interchange++ is the itemised bill for card payments. The merchant sees what the issuing bank took, what Visa or Mastercard took, and what the acquirer took. Only the last line is the acquirer's to negotiate, so that is where the merchant focuses when comparing offers.
How it differs from interchange-plus
Under plain interchange-plus, interchange is passed through, but scheme fees are often folded into the acquirer's markup or lumped together with interchange as "cost". The merchant cannot see how much of the "plus" belongs to the network and how much to the acquirer. Interchange++ removes that blur by listing scheme fees separately.
The difference matters because scheme fees are not small. They include per-transaction assessments, cross-border fees, authorisation and clearing fees, and many smaller charges that the networks revise regularly. In the European Union, interchange on consumer cards is capped, but scheme fees are not, so scheme fees have become a larger share of the merchant's cost of accepting cards.
The terms are not used consistently. Some acquirers call a three-part price "interchange-plus" and some use "interchange++" for any cost-based price. A merchant should check the contract and the statement rather than rely on the label.
Formula and example
The fee on one transaction under interchange++ is:
- is the interchange on the transaction, set by the network for that card type, region and merchant category.
- is the total scheme fees the network charges on the transaction.
- is the acquirer's margin, often a percentage of the value plus a fixed amount, or a fixed amount only.
Take a EUR 100 online sale on a consumer debit card issued in the EU and used at an EU merchant. Interchange is capped at 0.2%, so . Suppose scheme fees come to EUR 0.08 and the acquirer charges a margin of EUR 0.10 per transaction:
The merchant pays EUR 0.38, or 0.38% of the sale. If the same sale were made on a card issued outside the EEA, interchange and scheme fees would both be higher, while the EUR 0.10 margin would not change. The scheme-fee and margin figures are illustrative.
Why Europe uses it
The EU Interchange Fee Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2015/751, caps interchange on consumer cards at 0.2% of the value for debit and 0.3% for credit cards. Article 9 requires acquirers to offer and charge merchant service charges broken down by card category and brand, with interchange and scheme fees shown separately, unless the merchant asks in writing for a blended price. This unbundling rule pushed much of the European market, across the EEA countries, towards interchange-plus and interchange++ contracts.
The detail also lets merchants see costs that the caps do not cover. Cards issued outside the EEA, commercial cards and three-party schemes such as American Express fall outside the consumer caps. After the United Kingdom left the EU, Visa and Mastercard raised interchange on online payments between the UK and the EEA, and the UK Payment Systems Regulator has examined those increases. An interchange++ statement shows such changes line by line.
Who uses it and the trade-offs
Interchange++ suits medium and large merchants, especially in e-commerce, that process enough volume to negotiate the margin and have finance teams to check statements. Many acquirers and processors offer it to larger customers, while small merchants served by a payment facilitator more often pay flat-rate pricing or tiered pricing.
- Transparency. The merchant sees its card mix and the true cost of each kind of card, such as premium cards, card-not-present sales or foreign cards.
- Fair comparison. Two acquirers can be compared on margin alone, because interchange and scheme fees are the same whoever processes the payment.
- Complexity. Statements can run to hundreds of lines. Reconciliation takes work, and scheme fees are hard to check without the networks' fee schedules.
- Variable cost. The total moves with card mix and network changes, so the monthly bill is harder to budget than a single rate.
Whatever the label, the merchant's overall merchant discount rate is built from the same three parts. Other charges, such as chargeback and monthly fees, sit outside the formula; the full picture is the effective acceptance cost. Rates for individual card types appear in the Visa interchange rates table and the Mastercard interchange rates table.