Interchange, the part with a legal ceiling

Interchange is the slice your customer’s bank keeps, and at home it has a ceiling

Every time a customer pays by card, your provider passes a fee to the bank that issued the card. That fee is interchange. For UK consumer cards used at a UK shop through a UK provider it is capped by law: 0.2% of the sale on debit, including prepaid, and 0.3% on credit. Business cards are outside that cap, and so is a card issued abroad.

Three things that decide what interchange costs you

1. Where the card came from. The cap applies only when the shop, the provider and the card issuer are all in the UK. A payment on a card issued in France or Spain is outside it, even when the customer is standing at your counter.
2. Whose card it is. The cap covers consumer cards. A customer paying on a company card is a different transaction with a different, uncapped fee.
3. Whether the card was present. For payments between the UK and the EEA the gap is widest online, where the card is not physically present. That is the corridor the regulator has spent four years on.

Task before opening time. Split last month’s card takings into UK consumer debit, UK consumer credit, business cards and cards from abroad. Apply 0.2% and 0.3% to the first two. Whatever your statement charges above that on those two lines is not interchange, and it is not the law: it is scheme fees and your provider’s margin.

How a 0.2% fee on EEA cards became 1.15%, and where the case stands

• 9 Dec 2015The interchange caps take effect: 0.2% debit, 0.3% credit.
• After the UK leaves the EUPayments between the UK and the EEA fall outside both the UK and the EU caps.
• 2021 to 2022Visa and Mastercard raise interchange on UK-EEA card-not-present payments fivefold: debit from 0.2% to 1.15%, credit from 0.3% to 1.5%.
• Dec 2024The Payment Systems Regulator concludes the rises cost UK businesses £150m to £200m a year and that a price cap is the only effective remedy.
• Oct 2025It drops the idea of an interim cap and consults on how to set a permanent one, while Visa, Mastercard and Revolut challenge its power to cap at all.
• 15 Jan 2026The High Court rules that the regulator does have that power.
• 16 Sep 2026On the day we last checked, we could find no published level for the permanent cap. Until one exists, the 1.15% and 1.5% stand.

What the fivefold rise costs a small online shop

Take £20,000 a month in online sales paid on EEA consumer debit cards. At 1.15%, interchange alone is £230 a month. At the old 0.2% it was £40. The difference is £190 a month, or £2,280 a year, before a single scheme fee or a penny of your provider’s margin. If the same £20,000 is on EEA consumer credit, the gap between 1.5% and 0.3% is £240 a month.

Whether you see that number depends on how you are priced. On interchange-plus pricing it arrives as its own line and moves when interchange moves. On a single blended rate your provider absorbed it, repriced you, or both, and the statement will not tell you which.

Four questions about interchange

Can my provider charge me more than 0.2% for interchange on a UK debit card?

Not for interchange itself: the cap limits what passes to the card issuer. Your provider can still charge scheme fees and its own margin on top, which is why the total you pay is always higher than 0.2%.

Does the cap apply to tourists paying in my shop?

No. The cap needs the card issuer to be in the UK. A visitor’s card from abroad is outside it, whether the card is present or not.

Why did fees on EU customers go up after Brexit?

Payments between the UK and the EEA stopped being covered by either set of caps, and Visa and Mastercard raised card-not-present interchange on that corridor from 0.2% and 0.3% to 1.15% and 1.5%.

Is a cap on those cross-border fees coming?

The regulator has said a cap is needed and the High Court confirmed in January 2026 that it can impose one. When we last checked, no level had been published.