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Comment by ajsnigrutin | Hacker News Reader

Not in EU.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/fees-for-...

> Specifically, the regulation:

> caps interchange fees at 0.2% of the transaction value for consumer debit cards and at 0.3% for consumer credit cards;

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Visa and MC were capped at 0.5% for the network before that change went in as well. But we have no idea what actual rates were beside the cap as they were negotiated with each card issuer based on their risk profile and customer base.

Key term in that sentence is consumer. As in that's not the cap for businesses.

You need to look at both sides of the transaction to figure out the total.

That's the full cap for "consumer cards", so cards owned by "normal people".

There are exceptions for business cards, as said in the document:

> provides for a limited number of exemptions, such as business cards used only for business expenses being charged directly to the account of the company;

These regulations were the reason that American Express pulled out of various European markets (but not all) as it became less/not profitable for them to issue their cards in those markets.

Completely false. They don't apply to 3-party systems.

Not correct. I was there, inside a EEA region bank, as Amex was pulling out due to the fee structure coming online in 2018.

Co-branded Amex cards essentially became considered no different than 4-party cards and stopped being exempted from the cap interchange in 2018. Nothing changed for Amex proper. How would you even define interchange when it's indistinguishable from the scheme fee?

There's a reason every European PSP charges 2-4x higher fees with Amex cards.

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