Online payment fees explained — how interchange++ pricing actually breaks down.
BazPay prices online payment fees on interchange++: interchange (paid to the shopper's issuer), scheme fees (paid to Visa, Mastercard and other networks) and the BazPay margin appear as separate lines on every settled transaction. No blended rate, no hidden category quietly added at month-end.
This page explains the fee structure, not the specific rates — those live on the pricing page. Built for merchants across the EU, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand: e-commerce sellers, subscription software firms and professional-services businesses.
Why interchange++ beats a blended rate for card payment fees
A blended rate is convenient at the top of a pitch and expensive at the bottom of a reconciliation. Four properties make interchange++ pay back once your monthly volume is worth looking at line by line.
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Transparent interchange++ from day one
Interchange (the fee that flows to the shopper's issuer), scheme fees (charged by Visa, Mastercard and other networks) and gateway margin appear as separate lines on every settled charge. Blended-rate summaries hide two of those three — interchange++ shows all of them.
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No hidden fee categories
The rate card published on the pricing page lists card, wallet, APM and SEPA Instant fees. Refunds, chargebacks and settlement events carry their own line where applicable. There is no separate category quietly added at month-end.
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Reconcile at the settlement-line grain
Every settled transaction, refund and chargeback carries a line on the interchange++ statement with the associated fee split. Metadata you attached at charge time rides through, so revenue per SKU or per plan reconciles cleanly.
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One fee schedule across every rail
Cards, wallets, local payment methods and instant rails share one merchant contract. Each method has its own line-item rate — no blended "one number" that averages very different economics.
The four components of an online payment fee
The total cost of a settled card charge decomposes into four parts. The first three are the classic interchange++ stack; the fourth covers refunds, chargebacks and payouts.
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Interchange
Interchange (flows to the issuer)
Interchange is the fee the card scheme sets and the acquirer passes to the shopper's issuing bank. It varies by card type (consumer credit, commercial, debit), region (domestic the region, the region cross-border, international) and merchant category. Interchange++ reporting shows this component per transaction rather than averaging it.
- Set by the scheme
- Passed to issuer
- Varies by card + region
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Scheme fees
Scheme fees (Visa, Mastercard, CB)
The card scheme charges its own network fees per transaction and per volume. These are the "++" in interchange++. They appear as a distinct line so finance sees the network cost separately from interchange and margin.
- Per transaction
- Per volume
- Network-specific
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Gateway margin
Gateway margin (BazPay's rate)
The BazPay margin is the acquirer + gateway component. Published on the pricing page as a headline rate per rail, it is the third and final layer of the fee stack — added to interchange and scheme fees rather than absorbing them.
- Published rate
- Per rail
- Predictable
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Ancillary
Refunds, chargebacks and payouts
Refunds carry their own settlement line, chargebacks their own event line and payouts to your local settlement account appear alongside settlement. Where fees apply, they are listed with the same interchange++ transparency as authorisation charges.
- Refunds
- Chargebacks
- Payouts
Current rate schedules for each component live on the pricing page. The acquiring contract itself on merchant acquiring.
How a fee travels through the platform
Six stages describe how the fee stack for a single charge gets recorded, settled and reconciled. Each stage extends the same schema on the statement.
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Authorise
A card charge posts to the acquirer through the scheme. The interchange bucket for this card, region and MCC is recorded on the transaction.
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Score fees
Scheme fees for this transaction are recorded alongside interchange. The gateway margin is added according to the published rate.
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Capture
On capture (immediate or delayed), the transaction line locks in with its full fee split for the settlement cycle.
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Settle
Funds clear on the scheme cycle. The gross amount, interchange, scheme fee and gateway margin appear as separate columns on the settlement statement.
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Payout
Net funds land in your local settlement account. The payout event carries a reference to the settlement lines that produced it.
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Reconcile
Refund lines, chargeback lines and any adjustments extend the same schema. Your ledger reconciles per line, not per blended monthly total.
Interchange++ vs blended rate
Blended pricing offers one number and hides the cost drivers. Interchange++ shows three numbers per transaction and lets you attribute each. The comparison below shows where the difference lands during a real reconciliation.
| Dimension | Interchange++ | Blended rate |
|---|---|---|
| Interchange visibility | Per-transaction, on statement | Rolled into a blended headline rate |
| Scheme fees | Broken out as separate line | Absorbed into the blended rate |
| Gateway margin | Published, per rail | Averaged across every card type |
| Cross-border transparency | Cross-border interchange line-visible | Higher blended rate, cause unclear |
| Refunds | Distinct settlement line | Netted silently against the total |
| Reconciliation grain | Per transaction | Per month |
| Explains itself at audit | Yes — every line has a source | Hard — the number is the number |
Buyer's shortlist on payment processors. Acceptance breadth on payment acceptance. Settlement mechanics on payouts.
Reporting features that make interchange++ usable in practice
Transparency only matters if finance can actually use it. Every feature below ships with the standard integration — no premium tier for the CSV export or the settlement webhook.
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Interchange++ statement
Every settled transaction breaks out interchange, scheme fees and gateway margin on its own row. No blended-rate summary.
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Per-SKU metadata
Metadata attached to the charge object propagates through settlement and refund events, so finance reconciles revenue and fees per SKU or plan.
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Signed settlement webhooks
Every settlement fires a signed HMAC event with the per-transaction breakdown attached — wire your ledger to close automatically.
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CSV export
Export any statement view as CSV. Push settlement, refund and chargeback lines into your data warehouse without a custom ETL.
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Real-time analytics
Approval, decline and refund detail visible within seconds — the same data the statement rolls up at scheme-cycle close.
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Refund reconciliation
Refunds post to the original charge and appear as a distinct settlement line, so revenue-net-refunds is computable per SKU.
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Chargeback event stream
Chargebacks arrive as signed events with reason code, evidence deadline and any scheme-side fee, feeding the same reconciliation flow.
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Named MID reporting
Interchange++ lines are attributed to your named MID, not diluted across an aggregator's pool. Chargeback ratios stay yours.
Read the fee split off every settled transaction
The signed settlement webhook carries the interchange, scheme-fee and gateway-margin split per settled charge. Wire the same handler your fulfilment code already runs to update your ledger with the fee split as it arrives.
BazPay-Signature: t=1717257600,
v1=8b3f1c...9d2e
{
"id": "evt_02H9",
"type": "charge.settled",
"data": {
"object": {
"id": "ch_5F9k",
"amount": 4990,
"currency": "EUR",
"interchange": 12,
"scheme_fees": 4,
"gateway_margin": 45,
"network": "visa"
}
}
}The three fee components are integer minor-currency units (e.g. cents) — deterministic and machine-reconcilable. Full schema in the API reference. (Values in this example are placeholders; actual amounts vary per transaction and are set as described in the components section above.)
Where line-visible payment fees actually matter
The four merchant profiles below already rely on interchange++ visibility from BazPay for their reconciliation, pricing and market-expansion decisions.
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E-commerce sellers with finance-team reconciliation
DTC brands whose finance team closes the book per settlement cycle need per-transaction fee lines to explain revenue-net-fees to their board.
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Subscription software
SaaS teams whose renewal book runs on interchange-sensitive card types need per-plan interchange visibility to price plans correctly.
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Professional services and B2B invoicing
Higher-ticket invoices where commercial card interchange dominates the fee stack need per-transaction visibility to price service work accurately.
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Multi-country e-commerce
Cross-border traffic sits on different interchange buckets than domestic the region. Line-visible fees make the impact of expanding into a new market concrete.
Out of scope for BazPay: adult, gambling, CBD, nutraceutical, forex, CFD, crypto-exchange, debt-collection and MLM. BazPay is not a merchant of record and does not board government-fee-collection or public-sector merchants.
Compliance signals behind the fee stack
Transparent pricing rests on a platform that can produce the evidence. Card handling runs inside a PCI DSS Level 1 environment assessed each year. Hosted fields and gateway-side vaulting keep your annual return at merchant SAQ A. Authentication runs on every card charge with 3-D Secure 2.2, and BazPay holds the scheme registrations that let interchange and scheme fees be reported at the source.
- PCI DSS Level 1
- Annual assessment on the acquiring and gateway environment
- Merchant SAQ A
- Hosted fields and gateway vault keep card data out of your stack
- Authentication
- 3-D Secure 2.2 with automatic exemption logic on every card charge
- GDPR
- In-region data residency; DPA on request
- Scheme registrations
- Visa VIRP and Mastercard SPoC/PCI-CP where required
Questions merchants ask about online payment fees
What actually makes up online payment fees on cards?
Three components: interchange (set by the scheme, paid to the shopper's issuing bank), scheme fees (charged by Visa, Mastercard and other networks) and a processor margin (charged by the acquirer or gateway). Interchange++ pricing shows all three on every settled transaction; blended pricing rolls them into a single number. BazPay uses interchange++.
What does gateway fees structure look like on BazPay?
The gateway margin is a published rate per rail (card, wallet, regional APM, SEPA Instant). Each settled transaction shows the margin on its own line, alongside the interchange and scheme fees the transaction incurred. The rate card lives on the pricing page; the interchange and scheme components vary per transaction based on card type, region and merchant category.
How do gateway fees on credit card processing differ from debit or commercial card fees?
Interchange on consumer credit cards is typically higher than on debit cards, and interchange on commercial or corporate cards is higher again. The gateway margin (BazPay's line) does not change with card type — the interchange line does. Interchange++ reporting shows this variation, which is why per-transaction visibility matters when your card mix shifts.
How are international payment fees handled?
Cards issued outside the region authorise on BazPay's regional acquiring contract but sit on international interchange buckets, which are typically higher than domestic the region interchange. Cross-border scheme fees may also apply. Both appear as line items on the interchange++ statement — you see the cost of an international-issued card compared to a domestic one on the same order.
Does BazPay charge ACH payment fees?
No. ACH (Automated Clearing House) is a US bank-transfer network; BazPay is a regional acquirer and does not process ACH. The regional equivalent is SEPA Instant (Single Euro Payments Area), which BazPay does process on the same platform as card acquiring — see the SEPA and SEPA Instant page for detail. Merchants that specifically need ACH require a US-oriented processor, which is outside BazPay's scope.
Are there hidden fees for refunds, chargebacks or currency conversion?
Fee categories are listed on the pricing page and each settled event carries its own line on the interchange++ statement. Refund and chargeback fees, where applicable, appear as distinct lines. Currency conversion (where a shopper's card is presented in a cross-borderR currency) uses published rates that also appear on the transaction line — no month-end true-up that surprises you.
Can BazPay be used for immigration fees online payment or other government-fee collection?
No. BazPay boards regional commercial merchants — e-commerce sellers, subscription software firms, professional-services businesses and digital publishers. Government-fee collection (immigration, visa, licence, tax) is a distinct vertical with its own regulatory and integration requirements. Public-sector fee collection is outside BazPay's underwriting scope.
How do I know the actual rates before boarding?
The current gateway-margin schedule and rail-specific fees are published on the pricing page. Interchange and scheme components are set by the schemes and vary per transaction as described above; a boarding conversation will map your expected card mix and business model to an estimated blended cost even though the underlying statement stays interchange++.
See the actual rate card, or scope your fee stack with a specialist
Published rates live on the pricing page. If you would rather walk your card mix, expected volume and market expansion with a payments specialist first, sales can map an estimated blended cost from an interchange++ starting point. See also merchant acquiring and payouts.