§8.3.1 The Merchant Service Charge and other direct costs

The Directive neither defines nor gives details of the notion of ‘cost borne by the trader’ referred to in Article 19. For most traders, the merchant service charge (‘MSC’) is the largest single component of the cost of accepting card payments. The MSC generally includes: (1) the interchange fee paid by the trader’s bank (the acquirer bank) to the card issuer (150); (2) the fees paid by the trader’s bank to the scheme (e.g. Visa or MasterCard); and (3) the margin retained by the trader’s bank to cover costs and profit. For credit card transactions, the MSC is typically fixed at a percentage of the transaction value, while for debit card transactions it is more commonly, though not universally, a flat rate. The MSC varies considerably depending on turnover, the business sector and other characteristics of the trader. In addition, there may be transaction or overhead fees paid by the trader to the acquirer bank or to a payment service intermediary. Payment service intermediaries help some retailers accept secure payments and may charge for providing payment functionalities, fraud detection and management services and/or services usually provided by acquirer banks (151).

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-09-07