Interchange++ vs blended pricing, in plain English

When you sign up to take card payments, you are usually offered one of two pricing models: blended, or Interchange++ (often written IC++). They can end up costing very different amounts for the same business.

Blended pricing

You pay one simple rate on every payment, for example 1.5%, whatever card your customer uses. Behind the scenes, the acquirer pays interchange and scheme fees and keeps the rest.

• Good: simple to understand and easy to forecast.
• Not so good: you can pay the same rate on a cheap UK debit card as on an expensive overseas business card. If most of your customers use cheaper cards, you are likely overpaying.

Interchange++

You pay the actual interchange on each card, plus the actual scheme fees (the first "plus"), plus the acquirer’s margin (the second "plus").

• Good: you only pay what each card really costs, plus a clear margin. It is usually cheaper for businesses with mostly UK consumer cards, and you can see exactly what the acquirer earns.
• Not so good: statements are more detailed and costs vary month to month with your card mix.

Which suits you?

As a rough guide:

• Blended can suit smaller businesses that want simplicity, or businesses with lots of premium, business or overseas cards.
• Interchange++ usually suits larger businesses, and anyone whose customers mostly pay with everyday UK debit and credit cards.

The only way to know for sure is to run your own card mix through both. That is exactly what we do in a free rate review: we take your last few months of statements and show you what you would have paid on each model.

New to your statement? Start with how to read your card processing statement.