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Card Brand Association Changes
Payrix has outlined specific network fee updates that will go into effect on April 22, 2022 and has made recommendations for pricing adjustments to ensure competitive and profitable merchant pricing.
Mastercard
Mastercard will assess a $0.02 per transaction fee on card-not-present Mastercard authorization requests. The fee will apply to authorization requests in the U.S. Region wherein enhanced intelligence is provided and a decline reason response is provided.
The digital enablement fee will increase from 0.01% to 0.02%, with a minimum billing of $0.02 and a maximum of $0.20 per qualifying transaction. The minimum billing of $0.02 will apply to account verification $0 transactions. This fee is assessed based on consumer credit, commercial and signature debit cardholder not present US acquired transactions.
Visa
Visa will assess a $0.10 fee for domestic transactions and $0.15 for cross border transactions for each subsequent authorization attempt following an initial decline response from the issuer that the transaction will never be approved. Decline codes received where this fee will apply include:
Response Code | Description | BankCode |
04 | Pickup Card | pickup_card |
07 | Pickup Card, Special Condition (Other Than Lost/Stolen Card) | pickup_card |
12 | Invalid Transaction | invalid_transaction |
14 | Invalid Account Number (No Such Number) | invalid_account, invalid_number |
15 | No Such Issuer | no_such_issuer |
41 | Pickup Card (Lost Card) | lost_card |
43 | Pickup Card (Stolen Card) | stolen_card |
57 | Transaction Not Permitted To Cardholder | not_permitted |
R0 | Stop Payment Order | stop_payment_order |
R1 | Revocation Of Authorization Order | revocation_of_authorization |
R3 | Revocation Of All Authorizations Order | revocation_of_all_authorizations |
Visa will assess a $0.001 per transaction fee when the address verification (AVS) yields a usable result, including full match, partial match or no match. The AVS fee will not be charged when the address is not verified.
American Express
American Express will assess $0.02 per transaction on all OptBlue non-debit charges including credit (consumer and commercial) and prepaid transactions submitted for all industries in the U.S. Region. The fee is not assessed on credit/return transactions.
Participation assessment fee will increase from 0.16% to 0.165%.
Discover
For all full acquiring transactions, Discover will assess $0.02 per account verification request as well as $0.005 per address verification request. On all keyed or ecommerce transactions, Discover will assess 0.01% of the gross amount of full acquiring sales for providing digital transaction security and fraud prevention efforts. Lastly, the Discover assessment fee will increase from 0.13% to 0.14%.
Recommended Adjustments to Merchant Pricing
Merchants across most interchange-based price structures will experience 3-5 bps of increased fees across the portfolio. For your merchants priced on a cost-plus pricing structure, these fees will be passed directly to them at cost. For your merchants on a bundled or flat rate pricing structure, we recommend a 3-5 bps increase to their rate to preserve your margins.
Should you move forward with a merchant pricing adjustment as recommended above, we have provided a sample message that you can use to communicate the change to your customer base:
“Due to increased costs from Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express that will be passed down starting April 2022, as of {Dates}, your bundled or flat rate fee structure will be increased to {insert rate}. Continuing your merchant account with us or use of your merchant account after 30 days will represent your acceptance to these terms.”
If you have questions regarding these changes, please reach out to your Relationship Manager.