As with everything else, COVID has taken its toll on the payments industry. We have seen restaurants, hotels, travel agencies, and retail volumes plummet due to lockdowns and customer behavior. For many industries, COVID has increased volumes in their higher cost e-commerce channel.
With few exceptions, many merchants’ ecommerce channels are slated to see another significant interchange increase in April 2021. See our previous blog about the planned April 2021 changes. Visa has provided some good news as Retail rates will now remain unchanged, as Visa is backing down on previously announced increases to the Retail channel. Please see the official Visa publication below, according to their website. It is unknown whether MasterCard and Discover will follow suit with backing down on previously announced retail rate increases, at this time.
Although Visa retail transactions will not see an increase, we expect ecommerce merchants will see an average of 4.3% increase in their interchange fees. With Visa increasing rates on “non-qualified” tiers by 0.45%, it will be more valuable than ever to monitor transaction downgrades and ensure you are getting the best available interchange rates.
If you need help monitoring and optimizing interchange, you should check out our cloud analytics platform that can provide you with actionable insights and send automated alerts to optimize all card processing fees, including interchange. Visit https://optimizedpayments.com/analytics/
If you would like us to help you quantify the full impact of all the Visa/MC/Discover rate changes for 2021, like we do for all our analytics clients, please reach out to joey@optimizedpmts.com.
