Dues and Assessments: The Payment Processing Fees Nobody Explains
When a customer swipes their card, the money doesn't flow directly from their bank to yours. It passes through a chain of parties — the card networks, the issuing bank, the acquiring bank, and your processor — and each one takes a cut. Understanding how that works, specifically the role of dues and assessments, is essential to knowing what you're actually paying for payment processing and whether your current rates are fair.
PCI Consulting Group offers merchant services for small and mid-size businesses — payment processing setup, statement analysis, and rate optimization.
The three components of every card transaction
Every time a card is accepted, the total processing cost is made up of three distinct components:
Interchange
This is the largest portion — typically 1.5%–2.5% of the transaction — and it goes to the bank that issued the card to the customer. Interchange rates are set by Visa and Mastercard and vary based on card type (rewards card, debit, corporate card), transaction type (card present vs. card not present), and industry. The issuing bank keeps this as compensation for the risk of extending credit and the cost of rewards programs.
Dues and assessments
These are fees charged by the card networks themselves — Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express — for the use of their payment rails. Unlike interchange, which goes to the issuing bank, dues and assessments go directly to the card brand. They're typically a small percentage of transaction volume (Visa's standard assessment is 0.14% for credit, 0.13% for debit) plus various per-transaction fees for specific transaction types.
Processor markup
This is the portion your payment processor adds on top of interchange and assessments for their services — authorization, settlement, customer support, reporting, and risk management. This is the only part of the cost that your processor controls, and it's the part that varies most between providers.
What dues and assessments actually look like
Card network fees are non-negotiable — every processor pays them, and they pass them through to merchants. They include:
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Network assessment fees
A percentage of your total monthly card volume by card brand. Visa and Mastercard each charge separately based on the cards your customers actually use.
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Network access fees
Per-transaction fees charged for using the card network's authorization infrastructure. These are small — fractions of a cent — but add up at volume.
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NABU / APF fees
The Network Acquirer Business Usage fee (Visa) and the Acquirer Processing Fee (Mastercard) are per-transaction fees charged on every authorized transaction, whether or not it settles.
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Kilobyte fees
A small fee charged per authorization message sent through the network. Rarely discussed but present on most merchant statements.
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International transaction fees
Additional assessments when the issuing bank is located outside the US — charged on top of standard interchange and assessments.
Why this matters for your business
Dues and assessments are largely fixed — they're the same for every processor because they're set by Visa and Mastercard, not by your payment company. What varies is how your processor presents them on your statement and whether they pass them through at actual cost or bundle them into a blended rate that hides the markup.
With flat-rate pricing, you never see interchange or assessments broken out — your processor blends everything into one rate and keeps the difference. With interchange-plus (cost-plus) pricing, interchange and assessments are passed through at actual cost, and you pay a transparent markup on top. That transparency is why cost-plus pricing is almost always better for businesses doing meaningful card volume.
Reading your statement
If you're on interchange-plus pricing, your statement will show interchange and assessments as separate line items from your processor's markup — giving you a clear picture of where every dollar is going. If you're on flat-rate or tiered pricing, those costs are bundled and invisible. PCI Consulting Group offers free merchant statement analysis — we'll break down exactly what you're paying in each category and show you what you could be paying on a transparent pricing structure.
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