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Billing

Mastercard billing is a weekly charge to your ICA and it will include fees that have a daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly recurrence and will be consolidated under that one weekly charge Reports summarize MasterCard billing information for programs and services billed to customer accounts. These invoices can be viewed in Mastercard Connect and will show fees for services rendered by Mastercard. This includes fees incurred for things such as products, services and reports. ACH as the funds transfer method for MCBS billing Please keep the following in mind:
  • Bank must authorize their ACH Bank to accept Mastercard drafts from Mastercard
  • Bank needs to ensure that the ACH account that they provided is open and funded

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Settlement

Settlement is the process by which MasterCard facilitates the exchange of funds on behalf of its customers that have sent or received financial transactions through a clearing system.  A Fedwire account must be used. Mastercard settlement is a daily drawdown, occurring at 8:00am CST. It’s expected that settlement fees are paid until 2PM EST the latest, otherwise non-compliance fees will be charged. The size of the payment dependents on the activity behind the program. The Mastercard settlement agent will initiate instructions through the Federal Reserve using a Fedwire 1031 drawdown message to initiate collection of U.S. dollar payments from accounts

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Types of Fees

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One Time Fees

These are one time fees required to stand up a card program / BIN. Examples of one time fees include:
  • ICA Set Up Fee
  • Principal Membership

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Recurring Maintenance Fees

These are recurring weekly, monthly, or annual maintenance fees for managing an active BIN

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Recurring Transaction Fees

These are recurring processing fees, that are usually a certain rate per transaction (i.e. $0.011) Example of Recurring Fees:
  • Authorization Issuer Processing Fee (per txn weekly)
  • Location Services Program Fee (monthly)
  • Settlement Service Fee (monthly)
  • Clearing Cycle Report Fees (per line per report weekly)
  • Mastercard Connectivity Fee (bytes)
  • Stand In Range Blocking (weekly)

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Fee Categories

Service CodeCategoryExplanation
ABIssuer AuthorizationThis event bills the issuer weekly for processing a transaction on the Mastercard Network. This event occurs when the issuer responds to an authorization sent by the acquirer.
CFConnectivity FeesThis event bills the issuer a weekly fee for connectivity to the Mastercard (Dual Message) Authorization Platform. The tiered fee billed is based on the total number of bytes sent to Mastercard and received from Mastercard.
DLIssuer Cross BorderThe Issuer Cross-border service bills issuers the assessment related to cross-border transactions processed through the Dual Message System.
EQConnectivity / EquipmentThe Connectivity/Equipment service bills customers for costs related to their use of Mastercard equipment. More information about Mastercard equipment is in the Authorization Manual and the Data Communications Manual.
FMFile MaintenanceMastercard or customers may perform additions, deletions, and changes to customer files, including Stand-In, merchant, and Member Parameter System (MPS) files. Stand-In Processing queries the data in these files before processing authorization requests. All billing events submitted to MCBS through the file maintenance system fall under the File Maintenance Service.
GEIPM IssuerMastercard owns and operates a centralized clearing facility for the daily processing and routing of worldwide financial transactions between Mastercard and its customers. A transaction that qualifies for the Integrated Product Messages (IPM) Service is assigned billing events based on individual IPM messages processed. Refer to the IPM Clearing Formats manual for more information about IPM messages
RPReportsThe Reports service events bill for reports that customers receive from Mastercard. These reports are available via three methods: Operational Reports (an application on Mastercard Connect™), File Transfer, and Offline (Paper). Each report generated is assigned a billing event number. Although most report fees are billed per line, some reports may follow a different billing structure, as indicated in the billing event description.
For full list of Service Codes & Fee Categories, go to Mastercard Connect

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Fee Timeline

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Access Your Billing

Login to Mastercard Connect
Select “Pricing and Billing Resource Center” under “My Items”. If you do not have this App, go to “Store” and request it. You will need your Connect Security Admin to approve the request.
Under Pricing and Billing Resource Center, you can select from “Pricing Guide”, “Transaction Detail”, or “Billing Analytic Tool”.
Go to Mastercard Connect > Go to Opereational Reports in an app in Connect. If you don’t have it, go to the “Store” and request the app from your MC Connect Security Admin > There should be a left button on the side of Operational Reports app that says “Find Reports”. Synctera highly recommends that you get access to Operational Reports as you’ll see additional billing and pricing information, invoices, etc.