What a foreign card really costs: interchange, scheme fees and FX

A customer in Texas buys a EUR 100 jacket from a shop in Portugal. The sale looks the same as one to a customer in Lisbon, and the price is the same. The cost is not. The foreign card can cost several times more in fees, spread across three lines that often arrive on three different reports, and a blended rate may hide them altogether.

This article takes the foreign card apart: how much more interchange it carries, which scheme fees apply only across borders, what currency conversion adds and what the published rates say. It then adds them up in a worked example. For how a quote packages these costs, see interchange++ and blended pricing. For the alternative to paying them, see local and cross-border acquiring.

Why does a foreign card cost more?

Because the card and the merchant’s acquirer sit in different fee regions, and each layer of the price treats that as a different product.

Layer	Goes to	What changes for a foreign card	Can you negotiate it?
Interchange	The card’s issuer	A higher inter-regional rate	No, but you can change where the payment is acquired
Scheme fees	Visa, Mastercard and others	Extra cross-border and international items	Not directly
Provider markup	Your acquirer or provider	A higher band on blended pricing	Yes
Currency conversion	Whoever converts	Applies when charge and settlement currencies differ	Yes, and you may be able to avoid it
Customer’s foreign transaction fee	The customer’s bank	Charged to the customer, not you	No

The fees follow the country that issued the card, not where the customer is. A German card used in Dubai still counts as an EEA card. Our cross-border fee glossary entry covers the basic definition.

How much higher is interchange on a foreign card?

Published rates give a clear sense of the gap. These are the ones we could confirm on 2 November 2026.

Corridor	Debit	Credit	Status
EEA merchant, EEA consumer card	0.2%	0.3%	EU Interchange Fee Regulation
EEA merchant, non-EEA consumer card, online	1.15%	1.50%	Visa and Mastercard commitments, to November 2029
EEA merchant, non-EEA consumer card, in shop	0.2%	0.3%	Same commitments
EEA merchant, UK consumer card, online	1.15%	1.5%	Scheme rates; UK cap not yet set
US merchant, Visa card issued outside the US	1.10% to 1.98% by product	1.10% to 1.98% by product	Visa USA rates; 2.00% for commercial

Three details matter.

The online gap is much wider than the in-shop gap. The European Commission’s 2019 commitments set the same caps for foreign cards in shops as the EU sets for domestic ones, and far higher ones online. An online shop pays about five to six times the EEA rate on the same kind of card.

The caps are consumer only and temporary. The Commission’s commitments cover consumer debit and credit cards. FStech reported that Visa and Mastercard extended them from November 2024 to November 2029, and that the Commission kept the right to investigate if evidence showed the caps were no longer appropriate. Commercial cards sit outside them, which is why they matter more on B2B traffic.

The UK corridor is unsettled. The Payment Systems Regulator says Mastercard and Visa raised UK to EEA online consumer interchange from 0.2% and 0.3% to 1.15% and 1.5%, and estimates that UK businesses paid an extra GBP 150 million to 200 million in 2022. It dropped an interim cap in October 2025, and the High Court upheld its powers on 15 January 2026. Bratby Law’s note, updated on 25 October 2026, says the cap’s level and start date are still undecided, and that a bill before Parliament would merge the regulator into the FCA. Check this before you rely on it for 2027 budgets.

Elsewhere the pattern repeats. Visa’s USA document, dated 24 October 2026, lists rates for foreign cards at US merchants of 1.10% for Classic, Gold and Electron on the base programme, 1.85% for Signature and Premium, 1.98% for Infinite and 2.00% for commercial products. Visa’s rate rises to 1.60% for Classic on its alternative programme, and each product rises further on downgrade.

What are scheme cross-border fees?

They are the fees the card network charges your acquirer when card and merchant are in different regions. We could not find these rates on the schemes’ own public pages, so the most useful evidence comes from providers that pass them through. Paybyrd, a European payment provider, publishes an indicative schedule, the most detailed recent one we found. These are its July 2026 figures, and it says individual transactions can differ.

Outlet	Item	Rate
EEA	Mastercard acquirer cross-border fee, intra-EEA consumer	0.12%
EEA	Mastercard acquirer cross-border fee, interregional	0.75%
EEA	Visa international acquiring fee, interregional	0.45%
EEA	Visa international card-not-present fee, interregional	0.55%
EEA	Visa international acquiring, UK-issued cards	0.10% plus 0.15% online
US	Visa International Service Assessment	0.80% single currency, 1.20% multi-currency
US	Visa international acquiring fee	0.45%, or 0.90% for select regions
US	Mastercard cross-border assessment and acquirer programme fee	0.60% plus 0.85%

Sources differ on the US figures. Checkout.com’s 2023 article gave Visa’s assessment as 1% or 1.4%, against Paybyrd’s 0.80% and 1.20% in 2026. The two were written three years apart by different companies, so check the line on your own provider’s statement rather than either figure.

The all-in totals are what matter. Paybyrd’s bundled average for cards issued outside Europe at an EEA outlet is about 1.3% plus EUR 0.14 to 0.18, depending on brand. For authenticated EEA cards it is about 0.12% plus EUR 0.04. UK and Swiss cards sit in between, at about 0.4% to 0.6% plus EUR 0.05 to 0.08.

Scheme fees also keep rising. The PSR’s March 2025 market review found that Mastercard and Visa had raised core scheme and processing fees to acquirers by at least 25% since 2017. Paybyrd notes that price lists are revised through the year.

Some scheme fees depend on your own behaviour. Paybyrd lists a Visa fee of 0.075% on online payments that are neither 3-D Secure authenticated nor tokenised, and a Mastercard fee of 0.06% on non-secure online payments. These lines are small, but they apply to every such payment.

What does currency conversion add?

It depends on who converts and how many times. Currency conversion applies when the charge currency differs from your settlement currency.

Stripe’s price lists show the size. Its US page adds 1.5% for international cards and 1% if conversion is required. Its Irish page charges 1.5% plus EUR 0.25 for standard EEA cards, 2.5% plus EUR 0.25 for UK cards and 3.15% plus EUR 0.25 for international cards, with 2% extra on UK and international payments that need conversion. Stripe says it generally converts at the mid-market rate and charges the fee on top, either as a separate line or, under its older method, built into the rate. If it is built in, it will not show in some reports.

That last point deserves a check on your own statements. An FX markup inside the rate does not appear as a fee at all. You see a smaller settlement amount.

The customer may pay too. Stripe’s documentation says the customer’s bank might charge a foreign exchange fee if the charge currency differs from the card currency, and might also charge when the card and the business are in different countries, whatever the currency. Our article on multi-currency pricing and DCC covers how to avoid paying for conversion twice. What you do with foreign balances afterwards is covered in settlement currency and FX risk.

Worked example: one EUR 100 sale, four cards

Example figures, for illustration only.

A shop in Portugal sells a EUR 100 item online. It pays interchange++ with a 0.50% provider markup. Interchange uses the capped rates above for a consumer credit card. Scheme fees use Paybyrd’s bundled Visa averages. The conversion line is an assumed 1%.

Card	Interchange	Scheme fees	Markup	Conversion	Total
EEA credit, authenticated	EUR 0.30	EUR 0.15	EUR 0.50	none	EUR 0.95
UK credit	EUR 1.50	EUR 0.62	EUR 0.50	none	EUR 2.62
US credit, charged in EUR	EUR 1.50	EUR 1.45	EUR 0.50	none	EUR 3.45
US credit, charged in USD, settled in EUR	EUR 1.50	EUR 1.45	EUR 0.50	EUR 1.00	EUR 4.45

The US card costs about 3.6 times the EEA card before conversion, and about 4.7 times with it. With EUR 8 of margin before payment costs, the shop keeps about 88% of it on the EEA card and about 44% on the last row. The two lines the shop could actually change are conversion and markup. The rest would need a different place of acquiring.

How do you work out your own foreign-card cost?

Use real payments, not a rate card.

1. Export three months of settled card payments with card country, card brand, card type, currency, amount and fees.
2. Group them into bands that match your fees: domestic, intra-EEA, UK and Switzerland, and outside Europe, or the equivalent for your region.
3. Pull each layer apart. Under interchange++ you can read them from the statement. Under blended pricing, use the rate for each band, and reprice one month at published rates to see the buffer.
4. Add conversion, including any FX markup hidden in the rate.
5. Add refunds and failed payments, where fees are charged anyway.
6. Calculate cost per EUR 100 of sales for each band and compare it with the domestic band.
7. Put approval rate beside it. A foreign card that costs more and also fails more often has a double penalty. Our guide to approval rate by segment covers that cut.

How can you reduce the cost of foreign cards?

Match the fix to the layer.

• Interchange and cross-border scheme fees: these fall only if the payment becomes domestic, which needs a local acquirer in the customer’s market. Our article on how many PSPs you need per market weighs that against the cost of one more provider.
• Conversion: avoid it where you have costs in that currency, by settling like for like.
• Non-secure fees: use 3-D Secure or tokens where it makes sense for the segment.
• Payment method: a local method may cost less than a foreign card. Compare both on the same market before you assume it. Which local methods to add first has a scoring model.
• Markup: a provider’s band for international cards is negotiable, particularly with real volume and a working alternative.

Do the sums at market level. A large market where most cards are acquired across borders may justify a local provider. Twenty small ones will not.

How does Omno help manage foreign-card cost?

Omno lets a merchant route by card BIN, country, currency and amount, so domestic cards can go to a local provider, where one is connected, and foreign cards to the provider whose price suits them. These are rules you set. PSP eligibility rules decide which providers may receive which payments, and the transaction trail and reports show where each payment went. Omno is not an acquirer, and each provider onboards you separately. The payment orchestration page explains how this works.