Interchange fee
The card fee passed through the merchant's acquirer to the customer's card issuer, separate from network and processor charges.
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What it is
When you unpack a card fee, interchange is the portion passed through the merchant's acquirer to the cardholder's issuing bank. It compensates the issuer for participating in the transaction and taking on costs and risk under the card network's rules.
You need the term when comparing interchange-plus pricing with a processor's blended rate. In interchange-plus, interchange is exposed as a pass-through cost and the processor adds its own markup and other network charges.
Gotcha: interchange is not the whole processing fee and it is not one fixed percentage. The applicable category varies with card type, region, merchant, transaction channel, and authentication, while network fees and processor markup sit alongside it. Regulation caps it in some markets and not others: the EU Interchange Fee Regulation caps consumer debit and credit, the US Durbin Amendment caps debit at large issuers only, and US credit is uncapped. Rates change, so read the current published schedule rather than a number you remember.
Ask AI for it
Model Adyen interchange-plus pricing with effective-dated rate tables. Store interchange categories separately from scheme fees and Adyen markup, classify each transaction from its card, region, merchant, channel, authentication, and settlement attributes, and calculate every component in minor units with the matched rule version recorded. Import actual fees from Adyen Settlement details reports, compare them with the estimate, flag unmatched categories and variances, and never hardcode one interchange percentage for all card payments.