"Is my rate normal?" is one of the most common questions a business owner asks about card processing, and one of the hardest to answer honestly. Many "average rate by industry" figures you'll find online don't say where the number came from.
There is a better starting point, and it's public. The card networks publish their own interchange schedules — the wholesale rates that make up the largest part of what you pay — and those rates are set by merchant category. They won't tell you what your total rate should be. They tell you the floor underneath it.
What Visa Charges by Industry in 2026
Below are Visa's U.S. consumer credit interchange rates for common business types, from the schedule effective April 18, 2026. Each rate is a percentage of the sale plus, for most categories, a fixed amount per transaction. Three card types are shown because the card your customer uses changes the cost as much as your industry does.
| Business type | Basic card | Traditional rewards | Premium (Visa Infinite) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retail, in person | 1.51% + $0.10 | 1.65% + $0.10 | 2.30% + $0.10 |
| Online / card not present | 1.89% + $0.10 | 2.04% + $0.10 | 2.60% + $0.10 |
| Restaurant, in person | 2.10% (min. $0.04) | 2.10% (min. $0.04) | 2.60% (min. $0.04) |
| Restaurant, card not present | 2.20% (min. $0.08) | 2.20% (min. $0.08) | 2.70% (min. $0.08) |
| Supermarket | 1.50% + $0.07 | 1.50% + $0.07 | 2.00% + $0.07 |
| Services, in person ($100+ sales) | 1.55% + $0.10 | 1.70% + $0.10 | 2.30% + $0.10 |
| Travel, in person | 1.75% + $0.10 | 1.95% + $0.10 | 2.55% + $0.10 |
| Recurring billing | 1.53% + $0.05 | 1.53% + $0.05 | 2.30% + $0.05 |
| Small ticket | 1.90% (min. $0.04) | 1.90% (min. $0.04) | 2.20% (min. $0.04) |
| Charity | 1.35% + $0.05 | 1.35% + $0.05 | 1.35% + $0.05 |
| Transaction fails to qualify | 3.15% + $0.10 | 3.15% + $0.10 | 3.15% + $0.10 |
"Basic card" is Visa's "All Other Products" column; "Premium" is its Visa Infinite spend-qualified column. The supermarket row is the rate for grocers below Visa's volume tiers, which are built for very large grocery chains. The last row is Visa's non-qualified rate — what a transaction can fall to when it doesn't meet the requirements of a lower-priced program.
Visa also runs a separate small merchant program for businesses with no more than $280,000 a year in Visa consumer credit sales. Its in-person rate for a basic card is 1.29% + $0.10 — lower than the standard retail rate above.
Three Things the Table Tells You
Your customers' cards matter as much as your industry. A $40 in-person retail sale on a basic Visa card carries about $0.70 in interchange — roughly 1.76% of the sale. The same $40 sale on a Visa Infinite card carries about $1.02, or 2.55%. Same store, same sale, different card in the customer's wallet. If your customers carry a lot of premium rewards cards, your costs will run higher, and that's not your processor's fault.
How you take the card matters. The same basic card costs 1.51% + $0.10 in person and 1.89% + $0.10 online or keyed in. Businesses that key in a lot of card numbers by hand pay for it.
Small sales cost more, proportionally. The fixed per-transaction amount weighs heavily on small tickets. A $10 in-person retail sale on a basic card carries $0.25 in interchange — about 2.5% of the sale, versus about 1.76% on a $40 sale.
Debit Is a Different World
Debit cards issued by large banks are regulated by the Federal Reserve. Their interchange is capped at $0.21 plus 0.05% of the sale, plus $0.01 if the bank qualifies for a fraud-prevention adjustment. On a $40 sale, that's about $0.24.
According to the Federal Reserve, covered (regulated) debit transactions carried an average interchange fee of $0.23 in 2024, or 0.47% of the average transaction. Debit cards from smaller banks are exempt from the cap and cost more: an average of $0.51 per transaction, or 1.21%.
A business where most customers pay with debit should have a noticeably lower effective rate than one where most customers pay with rewards credit cards.
Interchange Is the Floor, Not Your Rate
Here's the important caveat. You don't pay interchange directly — Visa's own schedule says so. You pay your processor, and your processor's price includes interchange, the card networks' own fees, and the processor's markup, plus any monthly and per-transaction fees on your statement.
So your total cost will always sit above the rates in the table. That's normal. The question is how far above, and whether you can see why. For most small businesses, total processing costs land somewhere between 2% and 3.5% of card revenue — but where you fall in that range depends on everything above: your industry, your customers' cards, how you accept them, and your average sale.
How to Check Your Own Number
- Calculate your effective rate: total fees on your statement divided by total card volume. It takes about a minute. Our guide to reading your processing statement shows where to find both numbers.
- Find your row in the table above and note where your business sits — in person or online, typical sale size, how many rewards cards you see.
- Look at the gap. The distance between your effective rate and the interchange floor is what you pay the networks and your processor. On an interchange-plus statement you can see that gap line by line. On tiered or flat-rate pricing you usually can't — which is part of why those models can cost more. We compare them in flat rate vs. interchange-plus.
If your effective rate is far above the floor for your category and your statement can't explain why, that's worth a closer look. A large gap is often padded fees — the kind covered in hidden fees on your processing bill — or transactions being pushed into higher-priced buckets.
Find Out Where You Fall
Clear Front Consulting will do this comparison for you, free. Send us a recent statement and we'll calculate your effective rate, show you the interchange floor for your business type and card mix, and tell you plainly how much of the gap is reasonable.
It takes about 20 minutes, and there's no obligation.
Sources: Visa, Visa USA Interchange Reimbursement Fees, rates effective April 18, 2026 (U.S. consumer credit card-present, card-not-present and small merchant tables; the table above uses the Product 2, Product 1, Restaurant 2, Restaurant 1, Supermarket Credit—All Other, Services 2, Travel 2, Recurring, Small Ticket, Charity 2 and Non-Qualified Consumer Credit programs). Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Average Debit Card Interchange Fee by Payment Card Network, 2024 data (updated December 19, 2025), and Regulation II. Worked examples are our own arithmetic from the published rates. Mastercard, Discover and American Express publish or set their own rates, which differ.