Glossary
Scheme fee
Scheme fees, or network fees, are what Visa, Mastercard and the other card schemes charge their member banks for using the network: per authorisation, per cleared transaction, for cross-border and currency conversion, for tokens, for programmes and reports. They are a smaller part of a card payment's cost than interchange, less transparent, and they change several times a year; the acquirer passes them on to the merchant inside the merchant discount rate.
What is in a scheme fee
A fixed fee per authorisation request, including declined ones; a percentage per cleared transaction; a surcharge for cross-border payments and for payments in a currency other than the card’s; fees for scheme tokens and for 3-D Secure; assessments on the acquirer’s volume. Each scheme publishes its own schedule, and acquirers apply it with their own rounding and grouping.
Why they matter to a PSP
Declined authorisations still cost scheme fees, so a cascade that retries every decline on several acquirers pays several times; cross-border routing changes the fee as well as the approval rate. A PSP on interchange-plus sees scheme fees as a separate line and can route to reduce them.
On the platform
Tranzify does not charge or collect scheme fees; a client’s fee rules per terminal can include them in the price it mirrors from its acquirer, and the limits on cascade attempts keep the cost of declines in check.
Updated: 2026-11-08