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Overview

  • As the owner of the card program, you are responsible for any per transaction usage fees, which are based on the cardholder’s transactional activity or transaction volume (Gross Merchandise Value - GMV)
  • These fees will be passed through to you on the monthly invoice from Synctera
The main fee categories are:

Issuer Cross Border Fees:

  • This is a specific category for a GMV-based fee for transactions where the country code of the merchant does not equal the country code of the card BIN (issuing country)
  • NOTE: The transaction can be initiated in USD, and the card can be in USD, but if the merchant themselves are in England, for example, the cross-border rules apply

Activity Fees:

  • Activity-based fees, such as authorization fees, clearing fees, switch fees, stand-in frees, transaction tokenization fees, connectivity fees, chargeback fees, network access/brand usage fees, and investment fees
  • Some fees apply to both domestic and cross-border transactions, whereas some fees are specific to either domestic and cross-border transactions - for those, cross-border rates are generally higher than domestic rates

Issuer Assessment Fees:

  • Also known as Quarterly Mastercard Reporting (QMR) fees
  • GMV-based fee - based on $-volumes reported to Mastercard for your program for the previous quarter
  • This increases the billing for the months of April, July, October and January, although the data example below shows the average BPS per month

Fee Estimates

Domestic Transactions

The below estimates are for a domestic POS purchase transaction:
  • In-store / Card Present vs. E-commerce / Card Not Present transactions
  • Fixed cost includes per transaction Activity Fees
  • Variable cost includes per GMV Activity Fees and Issuer Assessment Fees

In-store / Card Present Transactions:

E-commerce / Card Not Present Transactions:

Cross-border Transactions

The below estimates are for a cross-border (international) POS purchase transaction:
  • In-store / Card Present vs. E-commerce / Card Not Present transactions
  • Fixed cost includes per transaction Activity Fees
  • Variable cost includes per GMV Issuer Cross Border Fees, Activity Fees and Issuer Assessment Fees
For cross-border transactions, the added cost compared to domestic transactions is typically ~100 BPS. For that reason, the recommendation is for you to charge the end-customer a foreign transaction fee. See Controls for cross-border card transactions. NOTE: There are network rebates available to scaled programs that can lower these fees materially.

In-store / Card Present Transactions:

E-commerce / Card Not Present Transactions:

Appendix - Fee Details

NOTE: All fees listed are based on fees seen to date. The list of fees and rates may change with scenarios and as the network updates their pricing.

Issuer Cross-Border Fees

The GMV-based fee on cross-border transactions is listed in the table below. This fee is billed to you on a monthly basis.

Activity Fees

Activity Fees on domestic transactions:

The standard Activity Fees on domestic transactions are listed in the table below. These fees are billed to you on a monthly basis.

Activity Fees on cross-border transactions:

The standard Activity Fees on cross-border transactions are listed in the table below. These fees are billed to you on a monthly basis.

Activity Fees on both domestic and cross-border transactions:

The standard Activity Fees on both domestic and cross-border transactions are listed in the table below. These fees are billed to you on a monthly basis. These fees are mainly related to Mastercard’s chargeback, fraud and security services, including Mastercard MasterCom system, Mastercard Safety Net Fraud Services and Mastercard Security Resiliency Program. For the Mastercard Security Resiliency Program, Card Present (CP) will be assessed at 0.5 bps per authorization request, with a minimum of 0.0025andamaximumof0.0025 and a maximum of 0.05. Card Not Present (CNP) will be assessed at 1.5 bps per authorization request, with a minimum of 0.0075andamaximumof0.0075 and a maximum of 0.15.
  • Rate may differ if minimum charge of 300isnotreachedfortheperiod\*\*Ratemaydifferifminimumchargeof300 is not reached for the period \*\* Rate may differ if minimum charge of 100 is not reached for the period

Issuer Assessment Fees:

Your program $-volumes for the previous quarter are reported to Mastercard in the Quarterly Mastercard Reporting (QMR). The related fees are listed in the table below. These fees are billed to you on a quarterly basis.