Interchange-plus pricing

Card processing cost has three layers: interchange paid to the issuing bank, assessments and fees paid to the card networks, and the processor’s own margin. Interchange-plus (also called “cost-plus” or “pass-through”) pricing keeps those layers visible. The merchant’s statement shows interchange and network fees at their actual amounts, and the processor’s markup (quoted as basis points plus a per-transaction fee, such as “interchange + 20 bps + $0.08”) appears as its own line.

How it works, with numbers

Take a $100 eCommerce sale on a consumer rewards credit card. Interchange might run about $2.20, network assessments and fees roughly $0.15, and a markup of 20 basis points plus $0.08 adds $0.28, about $2.63 total. On the same sale, a typical flat rate of 2.9% + $0.30 charges $3.20, and the difference is invisible margin. The comparison flips on some transactions (flat rates can undercharge on premium commercial cards), but across a normal card mix, higher-volume merchants almost always pay less under interchange-plus, and they can see exactly what they pay for.

Why it matters

Transparency compounds as volume grows. A merchant processing $200,000 a month saves $1,140 monthly in the example spread above and, more importantly, can audit its statement, catch downgrades, and negotiate the markup, none of which is possible when costs are bundled. For ISOs and platforms that resell payments, interchange-plus is also the structure that makes residual math legible: your margin is a defined markup, not a share of an opaque bundle.

QorPay prices its programs on an interchange-plus basis, negotiated per program, with costs and markup reported separately on the QorCommerce ledger.