How Does Visa Make Money, and Who Really Pays the Hidden Card Fee?

Every time you tap a card, someone pays a fee. Not you — at least, not at the register. The store pays it. On an American credit card, that's usually somewhere around two to three percent of what you spend. Last year, American merchants paid a record one hundred ninety-eight billion dollars in card fees. That's more than three times what they paid in two thousand nine. And that money doesn't vanish. It gets built into the prices on the shelf — so even people who pay with cash end up paying it. You'll never see it on a receipt. But you can see where a lot of it ends up. In the fiscal year that ended this September, Visa took in almost forty-six billion dollars in revenue and kept about twenty-three and a half billion as profit. More than half of everything it took in. Meanwhile, in Europe, the biggest part of this fee is capped at a fraction of a percent. And this month, Australia banned stores from passing card fees on to shoppers at the till. So who really pays for your card? Why does the same fee cost so much more in some countries? And why does the person paying with cash help fund your rewards? Let's follow the money.

It started with a mass mailing. On September eighteenth, nineteen fifty-eight, Bank of America mailed sixty thousand credit cards to households in Fresno, California. Nobody had asked for them. The card was called BankAmericard. The early years were rough, with heavy fraud and unpaid bills, but within a few years it turned a profit. And it solved a problem that still defines this business. A card is only useful if stores accept it. And stores only accept it if enough people carry it. So the bank had to sign up both sides at once. Bank of America later opened its card to other banks, and the network grew into a consortium of banks. Rival banks organized their own, called Master Charge, which later became Mastercard. And in nineteen seventy-six, BankAmericard got a new, shorter name: Visa. In the fiscal year that ended this September, Visa processed more than two hundred eighty-one billion transactions. The year before, it counted nearly five billion payment credentials around the world, and payments and cash volume on its network reached seventeen trillion dollars. And here's the surprising part. Visa isn't a bank. It doesn't issue your card, lend you money or set your interest rate. It simply runs the road your money travels on — and charges a toll.

So let's follow one purchase. Say you spend one hundred dollars at a store with a credit card. The store doesn't get one hundred dollars. It pays what's called a merchant discount fee, usually somewhere between one and three percent. That fee gets split three ways. The biggest piece is called interchange, and it goes to the bank that issued your card. In the United States, a credit card interchange fee can look something like two point three percent plus ten cents. Visa and Mastercard set those default rates — but the money goes to the banks. The second piece is the network fee, and that's what Visa or Mastercard keeps. It's much smaller, often around a tenth to a fifth of a percent. The third piece goes to the payment processor that connects the store to the network. Add it up, and on a three percent fee, the store keeps ninety-seven dollars. Here's the clever part. The network takes a tiny slice of every payment, but it takes it from trillions of dollars of payments. It doesn't take the risk of lending. That sits with the banks. Visa and Mastercard just collect the toll.

And the toll adds up. In fiscal twenty twenty-six, which ended this September, Visa's net revenue was about forty-five point nine billion dollars, up fifteen percent, and its net income was about twenty-three point five billion. A year earlier, those numbers were forty billion and twenty point one billion. Mastercard is smaller, but built the same way. In twenty twenty-five, it brought in thirty-two point eight billion dollars in revenue and earned fifteen billion. Its network carried ten point six trillion dollars in gross dollar volume. Very few large companies keep anything close to half of their revenue as profit. Visa does it because once the network exists, each extra payment costs almost nothing to process. Every new card makes the network more valuable to stores, and every new store makes it more valuable to cardholders. Economists call that a network effect. And it means that once two networks are everywhere, it becomes very hard for anyone else to get in. That's why, for most stores, saying no to Visa or Mastercard simply isn't an option.

Which brings us back to the store. According to data from the Nilson Report, cited by a coalition of American retailers, merchants in the U.S. paid one hundred ninety-eight point two five billion dollars in card fees in twenty twenty-five. Back in twenty oh-nine, it was sixty-two point one billion. On Visa and Mastercard credit cards alone, the average fee rate was about two point three six percent. Most stores don't treat that as a separate charge. They treat it like rent or electricity: a cost of doing business, built into every price. That's the hidden part. A store that charges the same price whether you pay by card or by cash is quietly charging everyone for the cost of cards. Some American stores now add a card surcharge, and you will see that on the receipt. But most still don't. And retailers' groups argue that card fees make almost everything Americans buy more expensive. Banks and the networks answer that cards bring stores more customers, bigger purchases, faster checkouts and less cash to count, steal or carry to the bank. Both things can be true. But either way, the cost doesn't disappear. It's in the price.

Now think about card rewards. The cashback, the points, the airline miles. Banks can afford them largely because of interchange — and premium rewards cards usually carry higher interchange fees. So who pays for your rewards? In twenty ten, economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston tried to answer exactly that question. Their estimate: on average, each American household that paid with cash ended up paying about one hundred forty-nine dollars a year to households that paid with cards. Each card-using household, on average, received about eleven hundred thirty-three dollars from cash users. Because higher earners are more likely to use cards with rewards, the effect ran upward. Even after counting rewards, they estimated that the lowest-income households paid about twenty-one dollars a year, while the highest-income households received about seven hundred fifty. The numbers are more than fifteen years old, and payments have changed since. But the mechanism hasn't. When everyone pays the same price, the person paying with cash or a basic card helps cover the perks on the premium card in the line behind them.

Not every country accepts this. In Europe, the European Union capped interchange in twenty fifteen: zero point two percent for consumer debit cards and zero point three percent for consumer credit cards. And since twenty eighteen, stores in the EU have generally been banned from adding surcharges to everyday consumer card payments. Australia went further this year. On October first, twenty twenty-six, its central bank banned surcharges on debit, prepaid and credit cards on the Visa, Mastercard and eftpos networks. It also cut the cap on consumer credit card interchange to zero point three percent, and on debit to eight cents. The central bank estimates its fee cuts will lower merchants' card costs by about nine hundred ten million Australian dollars a year. Other countries went around the cards entirely. In India, the government has kept merchant fees on its UPI payment system at zero since twenty twenty, although it is now debating whether to bring some fees back. In Brazil, the central bank launched Pix in November twenty twenty. It's free for individuals, and well over one hundred fifty million people now use it. Same phones, same shoppers — very different tolls.

In the United States, the fight is still going on. In twenty eleven, a law known as the Durbin Amendment capped debit card interchange at big banks at twenty-one cents plus a small percentage. A federal court threw that cap out last year, but kept it in place while the case is appealed. Credit cards were never capped. Instead, merchants spent two decades in court. In twenty twenty-four, a judge rejected a thirty-billion-dollar settlement as too small. Then, in June twenty twenty-six, another judge gave preliminary approval to a new deal that the merchants' experts value at about thirty-eight billion dollars. It would cut credit card interchange by a tenth of a percentage point for five years, cap standard consumer cards at one point two five percent for eight years, and, for the first time, let merchants refuse some premium and commercial cards. Final approval is still pending, and some merchant groups have promised to appeal. Meanwhile, the Credit Card Competition Act — which would force big banks to offer a second network on their credit cards — has the support of President Trump. But it has not passed Congress.

So who's paying for your card? Everyone who shops — including people who never use one. Here's what's worth knowing. First, if you pay with cash or a basic debit card at a store with one price for everyone, you're likely subsidizing someone else's rewards. That's not a reason to feel guilty about using a card. It's a reason to make sure you're getting something back. Second, rewards are only a win if you pay the balance in full every month. Interest on a card balance can quickly wipe out whatever cashback you earned. Third, if you're in the U.S., watch for surcharges, and ask whether a store gives a discount for cash or debit. Some do. Fourth, if you run a small business, check what you're paying per transaction. The new settlement, if approved, would give American merchants more power to steer customers toward cheaper cards. And fifth, remember that where you live changes the math. An interchange fee capped at zero point three percent in Europe can be several times higher on an American credit card. Your card feels free. It isn't. You just pay for it in a place you'll never look: the price of everything else.

Next time on Margin, we follow the money into the biggest purchase most people will ever make — and a fee inside it that almost nobody negotiates. If you want to understand how money actually moves before the headlines catch up, subscribe — and follow the money.