Behavior-Based Network (Scheme) Fees: Lessons from Fiserv and Moneris
The shift: from static costs to behavior "taxes"
For years, the playbook felt pretty straightforward:
Interchange drove most economics
Network assessments and miscellaneous fees were background noise
That's been changing. Over the past 5 years, at CardTraq we've seen network fee unit costs increase over 30%.
And across these early 2026 updates, the fee increases are increasingly tied tohow you and your merchants behave, not just how much volume you run:
Cross-border settlement choices
Authorization data quality ("defined" vs "undefined," out-of-spec traffic, etc.)
Excess retries / reattempts
Time windows between authorization and settlement (when transactions aren't closed within specified windows)
The message from the networks is basically:
If your processing is messy, we'll monetize the mess, and if your pricing and pass-through aren't aligned, you'll end up eating these costs in your own P&L.
What Moneris is showing us (Canada)
Moneris Canada's public card-network fee update page puts specific numbers behind this.
A few examples, all explicitly Moneris Canada:
Visa Non-domestic Settlement and Multi-currency Non-domestic Settlement Fees (Canada)
For Canadian merchants settling in USD, Moneris shows these fees increasing from 0.1130% to 0.2825%, effective April 1, 2026.
In plain terms: on a CAD-equivalent $10,000 cross-border Visa sale settled in USD, the settlement-related fee jumps from about $11.30 to $28.25.
Mastercard MAC / Transaction Processing Excellence (TPE) program fees (Canada)
Moneris lists MACmoving from USD 0.2825 to USD 0.5650.
Moneris also shows other TPE-related fee increases (beyond MAC), reinforcing the point that these costs are increasingly tied to processing behavior and data quality, not just volume.
Time-window / "close the transaction" behavior (Canada)
Moneris has a March 2026 update for Mastercard time-based authorization validity fees for clearing transactions submitted between 72 and 168 hours after authorization in Phase 1, with a second phase in 2028 that extends fees into the 24–72 hour window. That's another clear example of the networks pricing operational discipline and timing, not just purchase volume.
What this implies for Canadian acquirers and ISOs:
Cross-border settlement choices and processing quality are no longer "rounding error" topics. They're becoming portfolio-level levers, and if your contracts and pricing platforms still assume these are "included" or flat, you may be absorbing increases you meant to pass through.
What Fiserv is showing us (Canada + United States)
Fiserv's merchant pass-through fee tables and 2026 card brand change communications add confirmation and expand the geographic lens.
Canada: Visa cross-border settlement applies when settlement currency is not CAD
In Canada, Fiserv's merchant pass-through fee schedule shows the same Visa cross-border step-up that Moneris discloses, but with broader applicability:
Visa Non-domestic Settlement Fee and Multi-currency Non-domestic Settlement Fee (Canada)
Fiserv lists these moving from 0.113% to 0.2825%, effective April 1, 2026, assessed on cross-border transactions where the settlement currency is other than Canadian dollars. So USD is included, but it's not limited only to USD.
Fiserv Canada also supports the "time-to-settle matters" theme:
Fiserv Canada references a Mastercard Authorization Validation Fee effective March 16, 2026 for transactions not settled within specified post-authorization time windows, aligning with Moneris' disclosure that Phase 1 applies to clearing transactions submitted 72–168 hours after authorization, with a second phase in 2028 extending fees into the 24–72 hour band.
United States: Mastercard TPE examples are explicit (Undefined Auth + MOTO)
Fiserv-based communications for the United States make Mastercard's TPE-style incentives very concrete:
Mastercard Undefined Authorization Fee (United States)
Increasing from 0.25% to 0.30%, with the minimum fee rising from $0.04 to $0.05 per transaction, effective January 1, 2026.
Applies when authorization data doesn't meet Mastercard's definition of "properly defined."
Mastercard MOTO fee (United States)
Expands from being charged only when a MOTO transaction is cleared to being charged on all MOTO authorizations, with caps on some high-value declines.
If your US pricing schedules don't distinguish defined vs undefined auths, or if you're only passing through MOTO fees at clearing, you're now out of sync with how the network is charging you.
Geography and caveats (Canada vs United States)
To keep the lines clean:
The 0.2825% settlement fee figures and the CAD-equivalent math example are taken from Moneris Canada and Fiserv Canada schedules (Canada-specific).Moneris explicitly calls out the case for those settling in USD.Fiserv Canada's language is broader: settlement currency other than Canadian dollars.
The Undefined Authorization and MOTO fee changes are taken from Fiserv's US-facing 2026 updates (United States-specific).
Why this matters for acquirers and product leaders
If you run an acquiring or payments product P&L, here are the second-order implications:
The lever has been shifting from pure pricing to operations
You've never really been able to negotiate these network fees the way you negotiate a merchant discount; what's changing in 2026 is the size of the line item. The practical lever is operational: data quality, auth strategy, settlement discipline, and cross-border configuration. Pricing and pass-through need to reflect that reality, or ops improvements won't show up in your margins.
Network fees have effectively become a behavior report on your platform
MAC/TPE-style fees and undefined auth penalties have been signaling where your traffic is out-of-spec, low-quality, or operationally noisy for a few years; the 2026 increases just put more dollars behind that signal. If your internal reporting doesn't isolate these, you're flying blind, and you can't align pass-through with the behaviors actually driving cost.
Cross-border has always been a P&L driver, but the fee spread is widening
Settlement currency choices and cross-border configuration have always swung real basis points before you even get to your own markup. The 2026 increases to non-domestic settlement fees just widen that spread. Your pricing schedules should be explicit about when and how cross-border and non-domestic settlement fees are passed through, or you'll quietly absorb FX-related scheme costs.
Two quick math examples
1) Visa Non-domestic Settlement, Moneris/Fiserv Canada
Old: 0.1130%
New: 0.2825%
On CAD-equivalent $1M of annual eligible cross-border volume:Old cost: $1,130New cost: $2,825Delta: +$1,695 per year, from this one network fee bucket
2) Mastercard Undefined Authorization, Fiserv United States
New: 0.30%, $0.05 min
On 1M undefined auths at low ticket size, the "extra penny" is $10,000 of pure network penalty for noisy traffic.
So what: where to act in Q2–Q3 2026
For acquirers, processors, and product leaders in Canada and the United States:
Instrument behavior-linked network fees internally Break out MAC/TPE-related fees, undefined auth, authorization validity / validation fees, settlement-related fees, and other behavior fees as separate line items. Trend them by portfolio, channel, and market. Understand the full costs of these in bps and per transaction.
Make product and ops jointly accountable Treat sloppy authorization data and poor settlement discipline as product problems, not just ops cleanup.
Decide your stance with merchants and platforms Absorb, pass through, or build shared-savings models. For ISVs and platforms, "network-aware optimization" is becoming a real product story.
Closing
Moneris and Fiserv didn't publish these 2026 updates as think pieces, but they make one thing clear: Visa and Mastercard are continuing to put a higher price on processing behavior.
Curious how this is showing up in your world (Canada or United States):
Are you already tracking behavior-linked network fees as a separate P&L line?
What's one change you'd make to your roadmap after reading these 2026 updates?
P.S. If you're trying to see these fees cleanly by network, platform, and market (and then prioritize the biggest drivers), that's exactly the kind of visibility we built CardTraq for. If it's useful, I'm happy to share how we approach measuring and reducing behavior-based network fees.