Visa and Mastercard to raise processing fees in April

Visa and Mastercard, the two largest card networks, are expected to raise fees for processing transactions in April as reported by the Wall Street Journal. The increase will affect the interchange fees as well as the fees that card networks charge financial institutions for processing card payments.

Visa spokesperson confirmed that the changes would go into effect only for merchant banks, and not merchants. It will be up to the merchant banks to either pass on the fee hike to the merchants or to absorb it themselves. If the costs are passed on to the merchants, they will likely end up being passed on to the end-customers.