Mastercard told a client a service was required. Mastercard's own documentation says it's optional.
We're working with a mid-sized card issuer on a network fee review. One of the opportunities we flagged was a set of services the issuer confirmed they don't use.
The issuer asked Mastercard to switch them off. Mastercard pushed back, said the services were required, and warned of a charge to reinstate them later.
So we went to Mastercard's own guide. It describes those services as optional and opt-in, in plain language. The issuer has gone back to Mastercard with the chapter, page and wording.
Why do network fee answers so often come back wrong?
This isn't a one-off. Issuers tell us the same thing all the time. Fee questions take weeks to answer, get passed between multiple teams at the network, and often come back wrong.
And this was one of the easy ones. Most of the time the networks' confidential fee guides aren't clear enough to settle the question on their own. The wording is vague, the same fee shows up under different names, and the billing doesn't always match the description.
If the network can't get its own fees right, how is an issuer supposed to? And can a general-purpose AI tool possibly do it, when the answer sits in confidential documents behind a member login, and even those documents often don't give a straight answer?
It takes people who know the billing codes, know where the guides fall short, and have seen how the networks respond across many issuers. That's the work.
If a network tells you a fee is required, ask them to show you where it says so.
Related reading: the network fee process exists but the granularity doesn't, and the 30-minute network fee review routine.