Compliance in a sponsored program is four jobs, not one: awareness, implementation, evidence and financial liability. They rarely sit with the same party, and liability sits furthest from the other three.
Read more →Most BIN sponsors recover only part of what the networks bill them. Roughly half of network costs aren't transaction-linked, so accurate pass-through needs apportionment, not a per-transaction split.
Read more →Network (scheme) bulletins are labeled by audience, not relevance, so most teams read everything to act on a fraction. The four kinds that carry a cost.
Read more →Two regulators examined card network fees and declined to set a price. What the RBA and PSR did instead, and what it leaves issuers and acquirers to do.
Read more →Network fee failures are silent. The invoice still gets paid. Six failure modes from UK and Australian regulator findings, and the one cause behind them.
Read more →By April 2027, card networks in Australia must publish a Scheme Fee Roadmap. The spec is public everywhere. Here is what issuers and acquirers build in its place.
Read more →The Fed reported $12.95B in US debit network fees for 2023, averaging 12.9 cents per transaction. Controls catch the material line items. Not the rest.
Read more →The UK PSR and Australia's Payments System Board both found network fees rising and competition weak. Neither capped them. The remedy shifts the work to you.
Read more →The RBA reports domestic network fees at 10.5 bps and cross-border at 158.2 for Australian acquirers. Here is how to run the same split on your own portfolio.
Read more →Interchange is only part of the cost stack. Assessments, auth, ad valorem, cross-border, and behavior-based fees can reshuffle merchant profitability rankings.
Read more →A signed issuer agreement locks your incentives, not your fees. Why network fee invoices keep moving after the contract, and who should own monthly governance.
Read more →Visa raised its Non-Domestic Settlement Currency Fee from 0.10% to 0.25%. Learn how to catch quiet network fee changes before they impact your budget.
Read more →Mastercard's revised TPE rules exclude incremental preauth flows but require full reversal within 30 days. What hospitality and travel acquirers should check.
Read more →Network compliance at most issuers isn't a workflow, it's a manual grind through 100+ bulletins. Here's where the costly errors hide and how to catch them.
Read more →Mastercard's scam monitoring standard starts July 24, 2026. The 72-hour clock tests your response chain, not detection. Sponsor banks carry the exposure.
Read more →Planning your 2027 card payments budget? Review the Visa and Mastercard network fee, interchange, compliance, and regulatory changes from H1 2026 that could affect issuer and acquirer profitability.
Read more →In Japan, interchange (not interest) funds the card issuer, and standard retail rates run ~8x the EU and Australia caps. Why Japan chose disclosure over price control.
Read more →Card networks publish one fee schedule, but smaller issuers and acquirers pay more per dollar of volume. Four structural reasons why, and what to do about it in 2026.
Read more →Visa and Mastercard issued 25% more bulletins in 2025, but compliance teams didn't grow with them. Here's where that gap surfaces as P&L variance, and how to close it.
Read more →Network fees are growing faster than volume in 2026. The four drivers raising cost per dollar of volume across acquirer and issuer books, and how to track it.
Read more →Mastercard's Digital Enablement Fee (DEF) was repriced and rebundled April 6, 2026. The new fee tiers, what's bundled in, and the margin impact for acquirers.
Read more →Why covered and exempt issuers should model the debit interchange cap as a recurring reset, not a one-time cut from 21 to 14.4 cents.
Read more →Visa and Mastercard's interchange settlement won preliminary approval. What the 1.25% cap and honor-all-cards change mean for card issuers.
Read more →Two Mastercard Spring 2026 fees are showing up as real dollars this cycle: the $0.09 Force Post Transaction Fee on clearings submitted without an approved auth, and the 0.10% Fallback Avoidance Fee when a chip card runs on the magstripe at a chip-capable terminal. Both bill to the acquirer, and both are recoverable through concrete merchant-side fixes. Part 3 of 5 in the Mastercard Spring 2026 Package series.
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