A UK consumer debit card payment carries 0.2% interchange. A French-issued debit card paying the same UK merchant online carries 1.15%. On blended pricing you never see that difference, because your provider averages it into one rate. On interchange++ you see it on every line, sometimes two months after the payment.
That is the real choice between the two models. The question is less "which is cheaper" and more "who carries the variance, and can your systems handle the data". The pages that rank for this query explain the definitions well and stop there. None of them shows what the fee data looks like when it arrives, which is the part I end up debugging. This guide covers both.
What Is Interchange++ Pricing?
Interchange++ (IC++, interchange plus plus) splits the cost of a card payment into three parts and passes each through separately:
| Component | Who sets it | Who keeps it | Typical UK range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interchange | The card scheme (Visa, Mastercard), within regulatory caps | The issuing bank | 0.2% to 1.5%+, depending on card and region |
| Scheme fees | The card scheme | Visa or Mastercard | Not published as a simple rate; dozens of line items |
| Acquirer markup | Your PSP or acquirer | Your PSP | Negotiated, plus a fixed per-transaction fee |
The first "plus" is scheme fees. The second is the acquirer's margin. The acquirer only negotiates the last one. Interchange and scheme fees are passed through at cost, whatever they turn out to be.
Interchange depends on the card: consumer or commercial, debit or credit, premium or standard, domestic or cross-border, card present or not, and whether the transaction qualified for a lower tier (tokenised, authenticated, enhanced data). I covered one of those levers, the token discount, in the network tokenisation guide.
Interchange++ vs Blended Pricing: What's the Difference?
Blended pricing (Adyen calls it "blended rates", Stripe calls it standard pricing) charges one rate per card category and absorbs the underlying costs. Stripe's UK list price, checked on 10 October 2026:
| Card type | Stripe UK standard pricing |
|---|---|
| Standard UK cards | 1.5% + 20p |
| Premium UK cards | 2.8% + 20p |
| EEA cards | 2.5% + 20p |
| International cards | 3.15% + 20p |
| Currency conversion | +2% |
Stripe offers IC+ only on custom pricing, "for businesses with large payments volume or unique business models". Adyen goes the other way. Its UK price list is IC++ by default for cards: £0.11 per transaction plus interchange, scheme fees and a 0.60% markup on Visa and Mastercard.
Read the full article on tomcn.uk →
About the Author
I'm Tom Wang, an AI Developer & Fintech Developer — building AI agents, crypto payment infrastructure, and cross-border payout systems with Rust, Go, and TypeScript. Based in London, UK.
Currently open to new opportunities in fintech, crypto payments, and AI agent engineering.
Top comments (1)
Good breakdown, and the variance point is the one that decides it in practice. On IC++ you also get the raw interchange fields back on every settlement line, which makes reconciliation heavier at first but is exactly the data you need later for level-3 detail or spotting when the card mix shifts. Blended is fine until you're big enough that the average stops matching your actual mix, and by then switching pricing models is its own project.