Most explanations of card processing costs stop at two buckets: interchange, and your processor's markup. That's the framing nearly every rep uses, and it leaves out a third one that shows up on every transaction you run.

Assessments. The card networks' own cut.

The three buckets, properly

Every card transaction splits three ways:

  • Interchange — goes to the bank that issued your customer's card. The biggest slice, roughly 70–80% of your total cost. Set by Visa and Mastercard, paid to Chase, Capital One, whoever.
  • Assessments — goes to Visa and Mastercard themselves. This is how the networks get paid for running the rails.
  • Processor markup — goes to your processor. The only piece that's actually negotiable.

Reps talk about the first and the third because one is a scapegoat and the other is their product. The middle one just quietly rides along.

What assessments actually run

Assessments are small percentages, but they apply to essentially everything:

  • Visa and Mastercard each charge a base assessment of roughly 0.13–0.14% of volume
  • Both add per-transaction network access fees — Visa's APF, Mastercard's NABU — typically a couple of cents per authorization
  • Additional network fees apply situationally: card-not-present, international, integrity fees for late settlement or missing data

Exact figures move with the networks' semiannual updates, so verify current numbers against your own statement rather than quoting these back at anyone.

Roughly, assessments land around 0.14–0.16% plus a few cents per transaction, all in.

Why it matters that they're separate

Two practical reasons.

Nobody can negotiate them. Interchange and assessments are both fixed costs to your processor. Any rep who implies they can get you a better assessment rate is either confused or hoping you are. What they can move is their own markup — which is exactly why you want a pricing model that shows that number separately.

They're where pass-through padding hides. On interchange-plus pricing, interchange and assessments should pass through at cost. Some processors mark them up quietly — passing through 0.18% when the actual assessment is 0.14% — and because almost no merchant knows the real number, the padding is invisible.

That's a small percentage. On $100,000 a month it's $40. Not catastrophic, but it's money you're paying for nothing, and it tells you something about the rest of the relationship.

Finding them on your statement

On a genuine interchange-plus statement, look for a section separate from both interchange and your markup, labeled something like:

  • "Assessments"
  • "Network Fees" / "Card Brand Fees"
  • "Visa Assessment" / "MC Assessment"
  • "APF," "NABU," "Acquirer Processing Fee," "Network Access and Brand Usage"

Add the percentage-based ones up and divide by your volume. If the result is meaningfully above ~0.15%, ask your processor to account for the difference. It's a fair question and a reasonable rep will answer it.

If you can't find assessments broken out at all, that's the more useful finding: you're on bundled, flat, or tiered pricing, where interchange, assessments, and markup are blended into one number you can't decompose. You can't audit what you can't see.

The bigger point

The value of understanding assessments isn't that you can do anything about them — you can't. It's that knowing the three buckets tells you whether your statement is honest.

A statement that shows interchange, assessments, and markup separately is one you can check. A statement that shows one blended rate is one you're taking on faith. When you know exactly what the fixed costs are, the only number left to discuss is your processor's margin — which is the only conversation worth having.