Interchange Plus Pricing
Traditionally, Interchange Plus pricing accounts have only been available to businesses that do a high volume of credit card sales — usually $25,000 or more. However, the market for merchant accounts is more competitive these days, and now smaller businesses (and even brand new ones) can get accounts that work on this pricing structure.
It’s straightforward, with only two rates from the credit card processor to consider: the interchange markup percentage fee, and the transaction fee. Merchants pay a consistent, flat fee regardless of the wholesale processing rate, plus a small fee per transaction. So, if your business has a merchant account with a 0.30% rate and a $0.14 transaction fee, you pay the wholesale interchange fee, plus 0.30%, plus 14 cents.
In essence, the wholesale rate (with the processor’s markup) is passed directly to the merchant, so your transaction fees are calculated on their actual wholesale cost — not arbitrary criteria set by the processor.