The Till School
The terminal · Course · Lesson 02
02

Interchange is the one part with a legal ceiling

Interchange is the fee your customer's bank keeps. For consumer cards inside the UK it is capped, which means nobody can quote you a higher number for it and call it their price.

Module
1
What we count
0.2% of the transaction on consumer debit cards, including prepa…
Checked
2 Sep 2026
What we are counting

0.

0.2% of the transaction on consumer debit cards, including prepaid. 0.3% on consumer credit cards. The caps apply when the merchant, the acquirer and the card issuer are all in the UK.

0.2%
cap on consumer debit card interchange inside the UK
PSR, the Interchange Fee Regulations · checked 2 Sep 2026
0.3%
cap on consumer credit card interchange inside the UK
PSR, the Interchange Fee Regulations · checked 2 Sep 2026
How it works

Three things to hold on to.

  1. The caps took effect on 9 December 2015 and are retained UK law after EU withdrawal.
  2. Consumer cross-border payments between the UK and the EU, or any other third country, are no longer covered by the caps. A tourist's card can cost you several times more than the same card issued at home.
  3. Commercial cards are outside the consumer caps. A business customer paying with a corporate card is not the same transaction as a shopper with a debit card.
Task before opening time

Split last month's card turnover into UK consumer debit, UK consumer credit, commercial and cross-border. Apply 0.2% and 0.3% to the first two. The rest of your bill has nothing to do with interchange.