Card Processing Calculator

Compare flat-rate and interchange-plus card processing side by side, with the arithmetic shown, not hidden.

Visa charges lower interchange to merchants taking no more than $280,000 a year on Visa consumer credit cards. That is not your total revenue and not your total card volume — debit, Mastercard, Amex and business cards are all outside the test. If you are not sure, leave this on the standard rates: they apply to everyone, so the answer stays honest rather than optimistic.

Flat-rate plan terms
Interchange-plus plan terms

Results update as you type.

Interchange-plus is cheaper — $348.34/mo

Flat rate

$891.67/mo

3.57% effective

Interchange-plus

$543.33/mo

2.17% effective

Annual saving: $4,180.08

Break-even ticket: no crossover at these terms

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The interchange rate this uses

For a card mix of mostly in person under the standard interchange rates, the interchange-plus column is built on a representative blended interchange of 1.14% of volume plus $0.16 per transaction, with the markup you enter added on top. The flat-rate column has no such figure — a flat rate is quoted all-in.

Card-present blend derived from the Visa U.S.A. Interchange Reimbursement Fees schedule, rates effective 18 April 2026, and the Mastercard 2026-2027 U.S. Region Interchange Programs and Rates, effective 17 April 2026 — both read from Internet Archive captures of the publishers' own document URLs, because usa.visa.com and mastercard.com return HTTP 403 to a direct request; retrieved 2026-08-04. Base programs only (Visa Product 1 and 2, Mastercard Merit I and Merit III Base): the cheaper volume-threshold tiers start at 19.2 million transactions and $1.08 billion of annual volume, which no small business reaches. Weighted 47% consumer debit, 45% consumer credit and 8% commercial by value, with the regulated-debit share (64.3% of value) measured by the Federal Reserve's 2023 Regulation II report to Congress. That comes to 1.1447% before rounding, plus $0.1605 per transaction. Its debit component, 0.3532% plus $0.1929 per transaction, works out at 0.770% of value at the Fed's own measured $46.26 average debit ticket, against the 0.73% the Fed measures across all US debit — close, but not a like-for-like check: the Fed's figure also contains supermarket and fuel programmes that pull it down and a share of card-not-present volume that pushes it up. Checked 2026-08-04.

Judgement, not measured data: the card mix behind this figure is not all measured. Commercial cards are weighted at 8% of value, cut from the 16% the card networks disclose, because fleet cards, corporate travel and accounts-payable virtual cards never reach a small merchant's till — that is the least evidenced weight here and is worth about ±0.03 percentage points on its own. The split of consumer credit across non-rewards, mainstream rewards, premium and super-premium cards (8-40-37-15 by value) is published by nobody, and the 60:40 Visa-to-Mastercard split is an assumption too, because Mastercard discloses no US volume level. Together those are worth roughly ±0.10 percentage points on the rate above.

These are representative blended averages, not a live feed. They are derived from the Visa and Mastercard US interchange schedules themselves — read from Internet Archive captures of the publishers' own document URLs, because both sites refuse a direct request — and the line above each figure says which schedule, which programs, and how the blend was weighted. Networks update the schedules a few times a year, historically April and October. Both plans are costed from the same figure, so a small drift moves the two columns together rather than changing which one wins. If you have a statement in front of you, your own interchange line is the better number — reading a processing statement shows where to find it.

Learn more

Flat rate vs. interchange-plus, in plain terms How ticket size changes which plan wins How to read a processing statement Why we don't recommend a processor