Stripe interchange-plus: who actually saves money?
"Once you're big enough, ask Stripe for interchange-plus pricing." I've given that advice myself, and you'll find it in every other thread about Stripe fees. The logic is appealing: instead of paying Stripe a flat rate that has to cover the most expensive cards, you pay what the card networks actually charge, plus a margin for Stripe. Why pay for an average when you could pay for your own cards?
But I've now analyzed the numbers in GrowPanel, with the company's permission, for a European SaaS company that has been on interchange-plus since the end of 2022, and compared them, month by month, with what Stripe's standard prices would have cost for the same payments. After almost four years, interchange-plus has saved it roughly nothing. In 2026 it costs more.
That's not a story about Stripe being sneaky. It's a story about card mix: some cards cost Stripe a fraction of what you pay for them on standard pricing, and others cost about as much as you pay, or more. Which of those your customers use decides whether interchange-plus is a good deal for you. This post goes through how the pricing works, what the rules in Europe say, real data from two companies, and a simple model of who benefits.
- Consumer cards issued in the EEA are where interchange-plus saves money. The card networks' cut is capped at 0.2–0.3%, and standard pricing charges 1.5%.
- Business cards, UK cards and cards from outside Europe cost almost as much in network fees as you pay on standard pricing, so there's little or nothing left to save.
- Stripe's margin on interchange-plus decides the outcome more than anything else. That's the number to negotiate.
The two ways Stripe can price card payments
Standard (blended) pricing is what almost everyone is on. You pay a fixed percentage plus a small fixed fee per successful payment, and the percentage depends on the kind of card. Stripe's own pricing policy calls it a model where "you pay an agreed fee … regardless of the underlying differences in Network Costs" (Stripe pricing policy, section 2.3).
Here's what that looks like as of October 2026 (Stripe pricing for the eurozone, Denmark, Sweden and Norway):
| Card | Standard price |
|---|---|
| Standard EEA card (consumer cards, plus Amex and others) | 1.5% + €0.25 |
| Premium EEA card (business and corporate cards) | 2.8% + €0.25 |
| UK card | 2.5% + €0.25 |
| International card | 3.15% + €0.25 |
| If the payment must be converted to another currency | + 2% |
The eurozone, Denmark and Sweden share the same percentages. Norway is the exception: one price of 2.4% for Norwegian and other EEA cards, business or not, and 3.25% for everything else, UK cards included.
"Premium" is easy to misread. It doesn't mean rewards or platinum consumer cards. Stripe defines premium cards as "commercial, corporate, or business cards issued by Visa, Mastercard, and Cartes Bancaires" (Stripe support). If you sell B2B, a large share of your customers pay with them.
Interchange-plus (IC+) splits the price in two. In Stripe's words: "Stripe attributes underlying Network Costs to you and adds a Stripe fee (markup)" (pricing policy, section 2.4). The network costs are the interchange fee, which goes to the bank that issued the customer's card, and the scheme fees, which go to Visa and Mastercard. Stripe's fee comes on top: a percentage of volume and a fixed fee per authorization.
Stripe's prices keep moving
Standard pricing isn't fixed either, and it's worth knowing the history, because it explains why so many European companies went looking for an alternative:
| When | What changed for EEA Stripe accounts |
|---|---|
| Until mid-2022 | 1.4% + €0.25 for all European cards, UK cards included. 2.9% for international cards |
| 1 July 2022 | UK cards move to 2.5% |
| 10 April 2023 | Standard EEA cards 1.5%, a new premium tier at 1.9%, international cards 3.25% (Stripe's notice) |
| Summer 2026 | Premium EEA cards 2.8%, international cards 3.15% |
The last change is new and has been quiet. Snapshots of Stripe's pricing pages show 1.9% for premium cards in July 2026 and 2.8% from early August. I couldn't find an announcement or an effective date. And it doesn't seem to apply to everyone: one of the two accounts I looked at, which has been on Stripe for years, was still charged 1.9% on business cards in October 2026. If your Stripe account is new, you're probably paying 2.8% on every business card. If it's older, check your recent payments before you assume anything.
Open a recent payment made with a business card in your Stripe Dashboard and look at the fee. About 1.9% of the amount plus the fixed fee means you're still on the old price. About 2.8% means you're on the new one.
Stripe's reason for the 2023 change was "increases in network costs (in recent years, major card networks have introduced several new fees and increased existing fees)". That's the thread to follow.
What the card networks actually charge
In the EEA, interchange on consumer cards has been capped by law since December 2015. The EU Interchange Fee Regulation limits it to 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards when both the card issuer and your payment provider are in the EEA (Regulation 2015/751, articles 3 and 4).
But the cap has holes, and they're exactly where a lot of SaaS revenue comes from:
- Business cards aren't capped. The regulation excludes "transactions with commercial cards" (article 1(3)). Visa's own rate sheet for payments within the EEA lists 1.65% for online payments with business cards, up to 2.0% for its top business tier (Visa's intra-EEA interchange, April 2025).
- Cards from outside the EEA have their own, higher limits. Visa and Mastercard committed to the European Commission to cap interchange on online payments with consumer cards issued outside the EEA at 1.15% for debit and 1.5% for credit (European Commission, 2019), extended until November 2029. Business cards from outside the EEA aren't covered at all.
- UK cards became "outside the EEA" with Brexit. For a European company, a British customer's card now falls under the 1.15% and 1.5% limits instead of 0.2% and 0.3%. The card schemes raised the interchange on UK cards used at European merchants after Brexit (Mastercard in October 2021), which is almost certainly why Stripe started charging 2.5% for UK cards in 2022. (The UK regulator has been working on a cap for the opposite direction, European cards at British merchants, but as of October 2026 nothing is in force.)
On top of interchange come the scheme fees, and they're anything but simple. The UK's Payment Systems Regulator found that Visa's and Mastercard's scheme fees rose by at least 25% in real terms between 2017 and 2023, and that the schemes "do not provide sufficiently clear and detailed information" about them (PSR market review of scheme and processing fees, March 2025). Cross-border payments are hit hardest: one acquirer's guide lists Visa's scheme fees at 0.11–0.31% for a domestic consumer debit card and 0.46–1.06% for an international one (Barclaycard).
Put it together, add a Stripe margin, and this is how the two models compare, card by card:
The interchange-plus ranges are my estimates: the published interchange caps and rates, the scheme-fee ranges above, and a Stripe margin of 0.5–1.0%. Stripe doesn't publish its interchange-plus margins, so that last part is the big unknown, and as you'll see below, it matters more than anything else.
The pattern is clear, though. EEA consumer cards are where interchange-plus shines: the network costs are well under 1%, and standard pricing charges 1.5%. Everywhere else, the network costs alone eat most of the standard price, and Stripe's margin decides who wins.
Account A: almost four years of interchange-plus
Account A is a European SaaS company with roughly $2 million a year in card payments. It switched to interchange-plus at the end of 2022, a few months after Stripe started charging 2.5% for UK cards, which made sense, because most of its customers are in the UK.
Two-thirds of its card volume is from UK cards, and another 17% from cards issued outside Europe. Only 17% is from EEA cards, the kind interchange-plus is best at.
To compare, I took every payment and priced it the way Stripe's standard pricing would have, using the card tier each currency's payments fell into before the switch. The range in the chart is because I can't tell exactly how many of the cards were premium ones.
For three years, the two models cost almost exactly the same. 2024 was the best year, at about 0.1% of card volume saved. In 2026, interchange-plus became about 0.2% more expensive than standard pricing would have been.
Splitting the cost in two shows why:
The card networks' share has been remarkably flat at about 2.0% of card volume for almost four years. That's simply what UK and international cards cost. Stripe's own part, on the other hand (its card processing fee, the fixed fee per payment and network tokens), started at 0.6–0.7% and is now about 1.05%, with a clear step up in May 2026.
So interchange-plus didn't fail because the networks got more expensive. With this card mix, there was never much to save: when 2.0% goes to the networks, there's only 0.8–0.9% left under the standard price, and Stripe's margin took all of it.
Two more things I learned from this account:
- The costs are hard to see. On interchange-plus, the fee on each payment is small. The network costs and Stripe's processing fees come as separate daily lines in the Stripe balance ("Card payments (2026-10-01): Transaction network costs"), and card networks can bill fees for a payment "up to two months after it was processed" (Stripe support). If you only look at the fees on payments, interchange-plus looks fantastic. It isn't.
- Every attempt costs money. On interchange-plus, Stripe's fixed fee is per authorization: "for authorization (successful and declined), void, charge, reversal, or to validate a card (for example, attaching a card to a Customer)" (same source). On standard pricing you only pay for successful payments. For a SaaS company that retries failed renewals and saves cards at signup, that adds up.
Account B: business cards, standard pricing
Account B is a European B2B SaaS company with around $1.5 million a year in card payments, almost all from customers in its home market. It's on standard pricing, and 78% of its card volume is from business cards.
That makes Account B a case where interchange-plus looks tempting at first glance. Most of its payments are domestic EEA payments, the kind that are capped at 0.2–0.3%. Except they aren't capped, because they're business cards. Visa's interchange on those is 1.65–2.0%, plus scheme fees, plus Stripe's margin: somewhere around 2.25–3.3% in total.
Account B's Stripe account is old enough that it's still charged 1.9% on business cards. At that price, interchange-plus would almost certainly cost it more, by somewhere between 0.3% and 0.9% of card volume depending on the margin Stripe offered. If Account B opened its Stripe account today, it would pay 2.8% on the same cards, and the answer would flip to "probably a small saving".
That's the uncomfortable part of the summer 2026 price change: for B2B companies on newer accounts, it makes interchange-plus attractive, not because interchange-plus got better, but because standard pricing got more expensive.
So who actually saves?
Here's a simple model. Five kinds of business, each with a different card mix, and four different Stripe margins on top of the network costs:
It's a model, with round numbers for the network costs (0.45% on EEA consumer cards, 2.0% on business, UK and non-EEA cards) and without fixed fees, declines or retries, so treat it as a map, not a quote. But the map is useful:
| If your customers mostly pay with… | Interchange-plus is… |
|---|---|
| Consumer cards issued in the EEA (B2C, prosumer) | Usually a clear win, as long as the margin is below about 1% |
| Business cards in the EEA, newer Stripe account (2.8%) | Worth asking for, if you can get a margin around 0.6% or lower |
| Business cards in the EEA, older Stripe account (1.9%) | Almost certainly more expensive. Stay where you are |
| UK cards | A close call that depends entirely on the margin |
| Consumer cards from outside Europe | A modest win if the margin is low |
| Business cards from outside Europe | A gamble: interchange isn't capped, and standard pricing caps your cost |
Account A sells mostly to the UK and paid a margin of 0.6–1.05%, which puts it right where the model says: around zero, turning negative as the margin went up.
The margin you negotiate matters more than the pricing model itself. Going from a 0.4% to a 1.0% margin moves the result by 0.6% of card volume, for every kind of business. If you ask Stripe for interchange-plus, the conversation should be about that number.
How to get it, and what to ask
Stripe offers interchange-plus as part of custom pricing, "available for businesses with large payments volume or unique business models", through its sales team (Stripe pricing). Stripe doesn't publish a volume threshold. You'll see figures online, but none of them come from Stripe.
If you're thinking about it, this is what I'd do first:
- Find your card mix. Start with where your expensive payments are: in GrowPanel's Payouts report, group the Fees tab by currency and switch to percentages, and each currency gets its own fee rate. Then, for the exact mix, export your recent payments from Stripe with their fees. On standard pricing, the fee on each payment tells you the card tier: 1.5% is a standard EEA card, 1.9% or 2.8% premium, 2.5% UK, 3.15% or 3.25% international. Group your volume by tier.
- Price your mix with the network costs above, and see how much room is left under your current price. That room is the most Stripe's margin can be before you lose money.
- Ask Stripe for the full picture: the percentage margin, the fixed fee per authorization (including declines and card validations), and what other fees come with it.
- Ask whether you can switch back. I couldn't find anything public about that.
- Look at the total, not the fee on each payment. That's the mistake that makes interchange-plus look better than it is.
Also check whether you're paying for something you could simply avoid. For Account A, currency conversion cost more than Stripe's entire interchange-plus margin, until it changed how it gets paid out. I wrote about that last week.
Seeing your real Stripe costs
The common thread in all of this is that the real cost of card payments is hard to see. On standard pricing it's on every payment. On interchange-plus it's spread over daily balance lines, adjusted weeks later, and mixed in with Stripe Billing, Radar and payout fees.
That's why the Payouts report in GrowPanel reads every fee in your Stripe balance, not just the ones on payments, and sorts them by type: payment fees, currency conversion, Stripe Billing, Stripe Tax, payout fees and the rest. On interchange-plus, the network costs and Stripe's card processing fees get their own types too. The effective fee rate (all fees as a share of the money that came in) is the one number that lets you compare standard pricing and interchange-plus fairly, month by month. And if you group the fees by currency, you can see which of your markets is the expensive one.
The fees also flow into the Cashflow report, so your cashflow shows what you actually kept.
The bottom line
Interchange-plus isn't a reward for being big. It's a bet on two things: that your customers mostly pay with cards the networks charge little for, and that Stripe's margin stays low.
- Mostly EEA consumer cards? Ask for interchange-plus. That's where the regulation leaves the most room under Stripe's 1.5%.
- B2B in Europe on a newer Stripe account? Run the numbers. The quiet move to 2.8% for business cards has made interchange-plus worth a conversation.
- B2B on an older account still paying 1.9%? Stay where you are, and keep an eye on your fees in case that changes.
- Mostly UK or US customers? Don't expect much. The networks take most of the price either way, so look for savings elsewhere first.
For Account A, interchange-plus has been roughly a wash for three years and a slightly worse deal in the fourth. Not a disaster, but not the saving it was meant to be either, and with the costs spread over hundreds of balance lines it's easy not to notice. That's the real lesson, whatever pricing you're on: watch your total effective fee rate every month, not the fee on a single payment, and when it moves, find out why.
You can see how that looks with sample data in the live demo.
Sources
Prices and rules as published in October 2026.
- Stripe: pricing for Denmark, pricing policy, standard vs premium cards, reviewing IC+ fees, 2023 price change notice, interchange-plus explained
- Regulation: EU Interchange Fee Regulation 2015/751, European Commission on inter-regional interchange (2019), PSR market review of scheme and processing fees
- Interchange and scheme fees: Visa's interchange rates for Europe, Barclaycard's interchange and scheme fee guide
- Account A and Account B: real Stripe data from two European SaaS companies, analyzed in GrowPanel with their permission and shown as percentages and rounded volumes only
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Lasse is the founder of GrowPanel. He previously founded Mouseflow, scaling it from $0 to $10M ARR before exiting. He also co-founded Soundvenue and actively invests in SaaS startups.
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