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What actually happens between a customer tapping a card and the money reaching your account, and which part of it you are paying for.
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A card payment passes through the issuing bank, the card network, and your acquirer or payment service provider. Interchange goes to the issuer, the scheme fee to the network, and the remainder is the acquirer's margin. Your quoted rate bundles all three.
Interchange is the largest component in most markets and the one your provider does not control. Where regulators have capped it, in the EU and UK for example, acceptance costs fell for everyone, which tells you how much of the price it was.
A blended rate charges one number for every card. It is simple and it overcharges you on cheap cards to subsidise expensive ones. Interchange-plus passes through the real interchange and adds a stated margin, which is more volatile month to month and usually cheaper if your mix leans to domestic debit.
Ask which one you are on. If a provider will not break out the margin, the blend is doing work you cannot see.
Prices change. Everything here is explained against live fee data, so you can check any of it directly.
FX live, 150 of 153 currencies refreshed 15 Oct 2026 from open.er-api.com (exchangerate-api.com). The remainder use a seeded reference rate.