Card Scheme Fees for iGaming Payments Explained

Most operators watch interchange and ignore the other half of the card bill. That other half is card scheme fees, and unlike interchange it has no legal cap, no single rate, and no obligation on Visa or Mastercard to explain how it's built.

Card scheme fees are the charges the networks keep for themselves. They reach every iGaming operator that accepts cards, they climb year on year, and on cross-border traffic they often cost more than the interchange everyone argues about.

This guide covers what card scheme fees are, how they differ from interchange, why gambling traffic pays more of them, and where the regulator has started to push back. Facts verified as of October 2026.

What are card scheme fees?

Card scheme fees are the amounts Visa and Mastercard charge acquirers for access to their networks. They're separate from interchange, which goes to the card-issuing bank, and they fund the schemes' own authorisation, clearing, settlement and risk services.

Term: card scheme fees. Definition: The charges a card network (Visa or Mastercard) levies on an acquirer for using its payment infrastructure, distinct from the interchange that the acquirer passes to the issuing bank.

On a merchant statement they rarely appear as one clean number. The schemes bill dozens of separate items: authorisation fees charged per attempt, settlement fees on cleared volume, a core assessment on total value, and a stack of extras for cross-border use, currency conversion, account updates and data quality. The interchange fee is the line operators know. Scheme fees are the ones that quietly widen the gap between the rate you were quoted and the rate you actually pay.

Card scheme fees vs interchange fees: what's the difference?

Interchange goes to the cardholder's bank and is capped by law in the UK and EU. Card scheme fees go to Visa or Mastercard and are not capped at all. That single difference explains most of the behaviour operators find frustrating.

Under the EU Interchange Fee Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2015/751, and the UK version retained after Brexit, consumer interchange is held to 0.2% on debit cards and 0.3% on credit cards. Scheme fees sit entirely outside that regime. The networks set them, change them, and add new ones when they choose.

So interchange is predictable and shrinking as a share of the bill, while scheme fees are the part that moves. An operator who negotiates hard on interchange and leaves scheme fees unexamined is fighting over the capped number and ignoring the uncapped one.

• Who gets paid: interchange to the issuer, scheme fees to Visa or Mastercard.
• Regulation: interchange capped in the UK/EU; scheme fees uncapped everywhere.
• Predictability: interchange is fixed by card type; scheme fees vary by transaction, geography and data quality.

How much are card scheme fees?

There's no single rate. The core assessment is small, in the region of 0.12% to 0.15% of transaction value, but the full stack of scheme fees runs well above that once cross-border, authorisation and currency items are added in. For gambling traffic the total is usually at the higher end.

The networks publish their fee guides to acquirers rather than merchants, so the real breakdown reaches most operators only through a processor statement, if at all. That opacity is the point of contention: operators can see the total change without being told which line moved or why.

The direction of travel is the clearest fact available. The UK's Payment Systems Regulator found that between 2017 and 2023, Visa and Mastercard raised their core scheme and processing fees by more than 25% in real terms, an extra cost of at least £170 million a year to UK businesses, in its market review of card scheme and processing fees (final report MR22/1.10, published 6 March 2025). That's not a gambling-specific number, but the trend runs through every operator's statement.

Why do card scheme fees hit iGaming operators harder?

Gambling traffic carries more of the expensive scheme fees than mainstream retail does. It's heavily cross-border, almost entirely card-not-present, and runs high decline and retry rates, and the schemes price all three.

Cross-border is the big one. A deposit from a player whose card was issued in another country attracts international scheme fees that a domestic transaction avoids, and those same cross-border transactions also escape the interchange caps described above. An operator serving twenty markets from one acquiring licence pays the international rate on most of its volume.

Then there's the per-attempt problem. Several scheme fees bill on the authorisation, not the sale, so a declined deposit can still cost money, and iGaming's habit of retrying soft declines multiplies those charges. Add integrity and data-quality fees that land harder on high-risk categories, and the per-pound scheme cost on gambling sits above the retail baseline. You can model what the knock-on effect of declines does to revenue with our approval rate calculator, and our guide to local acquiring for iGaming covers the cross-border angle in more depth.

Are card scheme fees regulated?

Not in the way interchange is. There's no cap on card scheme fees anywhere, but in the UK they're now under formal regulatory scrutiny, and transparency rules are coming rather than price controls.

The PSR concluded in its March 2025 final report that the market "is not working well": Visa and Mastercard face ineffective competitive constraints on the acquiring side, their margins run higher than a competitive market would allow, and they give acquirers and merchants complex or incomplete information on what they're paying for. In April 2025 the regulator consulted on remedies built around transparency and regulatory financial reporting, not a fee ceiling.

My read: don't expect a scheme-fee cap. The likely outcome is better disclosure, which helps operators see the bill more clearly but won't shrink it on its own. The pressure to cut scheme-fee exposure stays with the operator and its acquirer.

How can iGaming operators reduce card scheme fees?

You can't negotiate the schemes' rate card, but you can change how much of the expensive stuff your traffic triggers. Most of the saving comes from geography, data quality and routing, not from the headline rate.

• Acquire locally in your major markets. Domestic processing turns international scheme fees into domestic ones and lifts approval at the same time.
• Insist on interchange++ pricing. Blended or bundled pricing hides scheme fees inside one rate. Interchange++ (IC++) breaks out interchange, scheme fees and the acquirer margin as three separate lines, so you can actually see the scheme component.
• Cut needless authorisations. Smarter retry logic and cleaner decline handling reduce per-attempt fees. Retrying a hard decline just pays a fee to fail again.
• Send complete transaction data. Missing or poor-quality data triggers integrity and data-quality fees that clean submissions avoid.
• Audit the statement line by line. Scheme fees change without notice. If nobody reconciles them, increases go unnoticed for quarters.

Provider choice sets the ceiling on all of this. The iGamingPayments.ai directory lists acquirers and PSPs by region, so you can see who offers genuine local acquiring in the markets you serve, and the payments glossary defines the surrounding terms. If you're unsure which party even sets your scheme fees, our breakdown of the gateway, PSP and acquirer roles is the place to start.

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between scheme fees and assessment fees?

They're the same family of charges under different names. "Assessment fee" is the US term for the core scheme charge on total volume, while "scheme fees" is the broader UK and EU term covering the assessment plus authorisation, cross-border, currency and other network charges. Both go to Visa or Mastercard, not the issuing bank.

Are card scheme fees capped like interchange?

No. Interchange is capped at 0.2% on debit and 0.3% on credit for consumer cards in the UK and EU under Regulation (EU) 2015/751. Card scheme fees have no cap anywhere. The schemes set and change them at will, which is exactly why the UK PSR opened a market review into them.

Do iGaming operators pay scheme fees on declined transactions?

Sometimes, yes. Several scheme fees are billed on the authorisation attempt rather than the completed sale, so a declined deposit can still carry a charge. For operators that retry soft declines aggressively, those per-attempt fees add up, which is one reason clean decline handling matters beyond just recovering the sale.

Is interchange++ pricing better for seeing scheme fees?

Yes, much better. Interchange++ (IC++) splits the bill into three visible components: interchange, scheme fees and the acquirer's margin. Blended or bundled pricing rolls everything into one rate and hides the scheme-fee element, so you can't tell when the schemes raise it. For any operator at scale, IC++ is the only way to audit scheme fees properly.

Why are my cross-border card costs so high?

Because cross-border transactions attract international scheme fees that domestic ones avoid, and they also fall outside the UK/EU interchange caps. A player using a card issued in another country costs more to process on both counts. Local acquiring in your main markets is the standard fix - it converts international traffic into domestic traffic.

Can I negotiate card scheme fees with Visa or Mastercard?

Not directly, as a rule. The schemes publish fee guides to acquirers, and most operators have no seat at that table. What you can negotiate is your acquirer's margin and your pricing model, and what you can change is how much international and per-attempt volume your traffic generates. That's where the realistic savings are.

Will the PSR review lower my scheme fees?

Probably not on its own. The PSR's proposed remedies focus on transparency and financial reporting rather than a price cap, so the likely result is clearer information about what you're paying, not a smaller bill. Acting on that clearer information - through routing and acquiring choices - is still down to the operator.

Card scheme fees are the part of card acceptance operators understand least and pay most readily. They won't disappear, and the regulator isn't going to cap them. The operators who keep them in check are the ones who read the statement, price on interchange++, and move their biggest markets onto local acquiring before the next fee rise lands.

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