Interchange plus or blended: which one your statement is on

Two quotes on the desk. One says 0.55 per cent, all in. The other says interchange plus 0.35 per cent. The second number is smaller and the second quote is the one you cannot price.

Both are legitimate. They are built differently, and which suits you depends almost entirely on what your customers pay with. Here is how to tell which model you are on, and how to work out whether it is the right one for your venue.

Every card payment has three costs, not one

Whatever your provider calls its rate, the money splits three ways.

Interchange goes to the bank that issued the customer's card. Your provider pays it and never keeps a penny of it. On UK consumer cards it is capped by law. The Payment Systems Regulator sets the caps under the UK Interchange Fee Regulation, at 0.2 per cent on consumer debit and 0.3 per cent on consumer credit, in force since 9 December 2015.

Scheme fees go to Visa and Mastercard for running the network. They are small individually and there are a lot of them. Worldline's published UK scheme fee card runs to dozens of separate line items, some charged as percentages, some in fractions of a penny per transaction.

The acquirer's margin is the only part your provider actually earns, and the only part that is negotiable.

What the two models do with those three costs

Blended pricing adds all three together and charges you one percentage on everything. Every transaction costs the same, whether the customer paid with a personal debit card or a corporate credit card.

Interchange plus, written IC+ or IC++, shows them separately. You pay the actual interchange on each transaction, the actual scheme fees, and an agreed markup on top. The markup is the bit you negotiated. The other two move with your card mix.

Most of the market is on the first one. Merchant Savvy's guide to blended against interchange plus, updated 28 October 2025, puts 95 per cent of UK merchants on blended pricing, rising to 98 per cent of those taking under £10m a year on cards.

Why your card mix decides which one is cheaper

This is the part nobody explains at the quote stage.

Interchange is not one rate. It is a schedule with hundreds of entries. Visa's published UK domestic interchange schedule, effective April 2025, prices a secure consumer debit transaction at 0.20 per cent, capped at 50p however large the bill. The same document prices a Visa Business Debit card not present transaction at 1.15 per cent, and a Visa Corporate card not present transaction at 1.85 per cent.

Now think about what actually happens at your bar on a Friday. Almost every payment is a personal debit card, tapped, in person. That is the cheapest row on the entire schedule.

Under interchange plus, you pay for that. Cheap cards cost you less.

Under blended, you pay an average. Your provider set that single rate to cover a spread of card types, and if your mix sits at the cheap end of the spread, the average is working against you. A venue taking mostly contactless consumer debit is subsidising card types it rarely sees.

Flip it round and blended can be the better deal. A venue with a lot of corporate cards, a hotel taking company bookings, a supplier invoicing trade customers on business credit cards, is buying certainty at a fixed price while the expensive interchange sits with the provider.

How to tell which one you are on

Get last month's statement out. It takes two minutes.

If there is one percentage applied to your total card turnover and nothing itemised underneath, you are on blended. The line is often called the merchant service charge.

If you see interchange listed separately from scheme fees, with a markup shown as its own figure, you are on interchange plus. The statement is longer, because you are seeing costs a blended rate hides inside one number.

Two things worth checking either way. Does the rate differ between debit and credit, or is it genuinely one rate for everything? And is there a separate rate for non UK cards, which is where the next bit bites.

The cross border line that catches hotels

If you take online payments from European customers, this one is worth knowing about.

The PSR reported in December 2023 that Visa and Mastercard had raised interchange on online purchases made by EEA consumers at UK businesses fivefold, from 0.2 to 1.15 per cent on debit and from 0.3 to 1.5 per cent on credit. It estimated the increase cost UK businesses an extra £150m to £200m in a single year.

Three years on it has not been reversed. The PSR decided in October 2025 not to proceed with an interim cap, with a judicial review of the wider proposal expected to conclude in 2026. So those rates are still live.

Under blended pricing you will never see it. Under interchange plus it shows up as a line, which is uncomfortable and also the point.

What blended is genuinely good at

It is simpler. One rate, one line, nothing to reconcile.

It is predictable. Your costs do not move because a coach party paid on company cards.

And it can be perfectly fair. A well priced blended rate on a venue with a mixed card base is not a trick. The problem is not the model, it is being sold the model without anyone checking your mix first.

Five things to ask before you sign anything

1. Is this rate blended or interchange plus? Ask in those words.
2. If it is blended, does it apply to business and corporate cards at the same rate, or do those sit in a higher band?
3. What happens to the rate on non UK cards?
4. Is there a PCI fee, a terminal rental or a terminal subscription on top?
5. What is the total in pounds, on my last three months of trading, with every fee included?

That last one is the only question that makes two quotes comparable. We covered why in the first piece in this series, on the five charges that sit under the headline rate.

Where we sit, stated plainly

We charge no PCI compliance fee. There is no terminal rental and no subscription on the terminal, because the card machine is free, so there is nothing to rent. Hardware and setup cost nothing and there is nothing to pay upfront.

We do charge an authorisation fee. It is priced per contract rather than published, and there are other contract terms that are not on this website. We are not going to pretend otherwise in an article about fee transparency.

What we do commit to is that your rate is quoted in writing, with every fee named, before you agree to anything. Every product and module price we charge is published in full on the pricing page.

Common questions

How much does Visa charge merchants in the UK?

Visa does not charge the merchant directly. Your acquirer pays interchange to the card issuer and scheme fees to Visa, then charges you a rate that covers both plus its own margin. On UK consumer cards interchange is capped at 0.2 per cent for debit and 0.3 per cent for credit. Business and corporate cards are not capped and run considerably higher.

What is a merchant service charge?

It is the line on your statement covering the cost of accepting card payments. On a blended contract it is a single percentage of your card turnover. On an interchange plus contract the same cost appears as interchange, scheme fees and markup listed separately.

Is interchange plus cheaper than blended pricing?

It depends on your card mix. A venue taking mostly UK consumer debit usually pays less on interchange plus, because that card type carries the lowest interchange there is. A business taking a high share of commercial and corporate cards may pay less on a fixed blended rate. The only way to know is to price both models against your own last three months.

Which is the whole argument. Run your own figures through the savings calculator and see what your mix is actually costing you.