See the exact interchange rate for any card type, network, and transaction method. These are the non-negotiable rates your processor passes through to you.
When a customer pays $100 with a Visa rewards card, about $2.10 leaves your bank account before your processor takes a cent. That money splits three ways: roughly $1.75 to the bank that issued the card (interchange), $0.14 to Visa (assessment), and $0.21 in fixed per-transaction fees. Your processor's markup comes on top of all that.
This three-layer structure is why processing statements are so confusing. Processors who advertise "2.9% + $0.30" are bundling all three layers plus their profit into a single number. That simplicity comes at a cost: bundled pricing hides the fact that a debit card transaction costs roughly a third of a rewards card transaction, but you pay the same rate for both.
Interchange-plus pricing exposes these layers separately. The interchange passes through at cost, and you only negotiate the "plus" portion. For a business processing $20,000/month, the difference between bundled and interchange-plus pricing is typically $80-$160/month, because bundled processors pocket the spread on every debit transaction.
Merchants obsess over Amex's reputation for high fees, but the gap between a Visa rewards card and a Visa debit card is larger than the gap between Visa and Amex on the same card type. A regulated debit transaction costs 0.05% + $0.21 regardless of network. A Visa Signature rewards card costs 2.10% + $0.10. That is a 40x difference in the percentage component on the same network.
The practical implication: your card mix matters more than which networks you accept. A restaurant where 70% of transactions are debit cards will pay dramatically less in interchange than an online SaaS company where 90% of charges hit rewards and corporate cards, even if both process the same dollar volume.
Regulated debit interchange (banks with $10B+ in assets) is capped at 0.05% + $0.21 by federal law. But exempt debit (small banks, credit unions) is not capped and typically runs 0.80-1.15%. You cannot control which debit cards your customers carry, but you can monitor your statement to see the actual split. If more than 30% of your debit volume is exempt, your effective debit rate may be double what you expected.
Every rate table has two tiers: card-present (CP) and card-not-present (CNP). The CNP premium of 0.10-0.15% exists because online transactions have roughly 2-3x the chargeback rate of in-person transactions. This isn't arbitrary — it reflects the issuing bank's actual fraud loss exposure.
Keyed-in transactions sit even higher than standard CNP because they lack the anti-fraud signals that both chip readers and 3D Secure provide. A keyed-in Visa rewards transaction runs approximately 2.40% + $0.10, compared to 1.95% + $0.10 for the same card tapped at a terminal. On $50,000/month in volume, that 0.45% difference costs $2,700 per year.
If your staff regularly keys in card numbers instead of using the terminal, fixing that single behavior change can save more than negotiating your processor's markup down.
The rates in this calculator cover interchange + assessment only. Your processor adds their markup on top, which is the only negotiable portion of your processing cost. Typical markups by pricing model:
Markup of 0.10-0.50% + $0.05-$0.10 per transaction, depending on volume. A business processing $30,000/month can typically negotiate 0.15-0.25% + $0.07. This model lets you see exactly what goes to interchange and what goes to your processor.
Stripe, Square, and Shopify charge 2.6-2.9% + $0.10-$0.30 regardless of card type. The processor pockets the spread between this flat rate and actual interchange. This model overpays on debit, underpays on corporate cards, and averages out — but usually in the processor's favor by 0.30-0.60%.
Stax, Payment Depot, and similar charge a monthly fee ($49-$199) and pass interchange through at cost with a small per-transaction fee. This wins when volume exceeds roughly $8,000-$15,000/month, because the fixed monthly fee replaces the percentage markup.