VISA has announced a second waive of merchant fee increases effective July 1, 2009. This comes on the heels of MasterCard increases announced last April.
Visa Acquirer Processing Fee (APF) – Effective July 1, 2009, Visa is introducing a U.S. Acquirer Processing Fee (APF). The fee will be assessed on all Visa-branded transactions and there will be no changes made to non-Visa branded, Interlink or Plus transactions. This fee replaces the VISA Variable / Surcharge fee of $0.005 per item.
Misuse of Authorization Fee – Effective July 1, 2009, VISA will apply a new fee when a clearing record does not follow an authorized transaction or if a reversal is not completed for cancelled or timed out transactions. Authorizations will be matched with the corresponding clearing or authorization reversal transaction by using the transaction identifier field. VISA recently stated that while they will be tracking this beginning July 1, 2009, they will not pass along any charges until October 1, 2009.
Zero Floor Limit Fee – All transactions in the US are required to have a valid authorization. VISA will apply a new $0.10 per transaction fee to any VISA clearing transaction submitted without proper authorization. VISA will use the transaction identifier as the matching criteria between authorization and clearing.
Previous increases by MasterCard already in effect involve Cross Border Fees, Acquirer Support fees for certain international and internet transactions, and NABU fees for certain transaction types.
