Mastercard Worldwide and Visa Inc. have both announced revised fees and Interchange adjustments that are expected to ultimatey increase merchants cost of accepting credit card payments, as reported in the April 13, 2009 edition of the trade publication The Green Sheet..
MasterCard revealed a new Network Access and Brand Usage (NABU) per transaction fee levied at Acquirers beginning in April 2009. Similarly, Visa will levy to Acquirers a new U.S. Acquirer Processing Fee (APF) in July 2009.
Some good news: the new MC fee will apply only to transactions involving both U.S. merchants and U.S. cardholders. Also, the NABU fee is accessed on clearing records; it does not apply to unsettled authorizations, chargebacks, reversals, and other special situation categories.
In addition to these new fees, both bankcard associations, Visa and MC have announced new interchange rates, some of which will result in increased processing costs to some merchants in certain interchange categories.
The MasterCard interchange schedule is available at www.mastercard.com/us/merchant/support/interchange_rates.html
Visa interchange schedule may be viewed at http://corporate.visa.com/md/in/main/jsp
