2 PAYMENT METHOD PROFILES: CARD
Costs to U.S. Retailers Since 2011, U.S. retailers have experienced a significant and continual increase in card acceptance costs, primarily driven by volume increases and rises in unregulated network and interchange fees. Based on CMSPI’s analysis, it is estimated that U.S. merchants paid over $236 billion in interchange, network, and processor fees in 2024, up from $222 billion in 2023. Notably in 2024, interchange fees alone amounted to $150 billion, network fees totaled $21 billion, processor fees were $32.4 billion while three-party card fees summed to $32.9 billion. $122 billion, or over 50%, of total U.S. card fees were credit interchange and network fees. Interchange and network fees on single-message debit, where co-badging and routing is widely available, was just $12.21 billion of the $48.8 billion in total debit interchange, despite representing around half of card-present (CP) debit spend. The tables below show a breakdown of the $236 billion in 2024 U.S. card fees paid. We can see card-not-present (CNP) fees outweigh CP fees, despite higher CP volumes and over $11 billion was paid in international interchange and network fees in 2024, despite international transactions only constituting around 2% of U.S. card volume.
Analysis U.S. Card Fee Costs
Based on CMSPI’s analysis, it is estimated U.S. merchants paid over $236 billion to interchange, network, and processor fees in 2024. Tables 2.7-2.9 provide a breakdown for these fees. Tables 2.10 and 2.11 provide card- present/card-not-present and domestic/international splits of the data from Table 2.7. Please note the update in our 2023 estimate. As seen in the table below, CMSPI’s 2023 $224 billion number has been changed to be $222 billion due to updated data. U.S. Card Fee Costs (2022-2024)
$250.00
$200.00
$150.00
$100.00
$50.00
$0.00
2022
2023
2024
Interchange Network Processor
Graph 2.11
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