Let’s start out with a heads up: this is going to be a deep dive into business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-government (B2G) rates. If you’re new to payment processing, or need a refresher on Interchange, we suggest you start with our What is Interchange? FAQ.

As a reminder: Interchange is a fee that represents the underlying cost of accepting any given card type. The bank that issued the card, and the brand it carries, combine together into a series of costs for that card. Each card may have a few different rates associated with it, for different forms of acceptance like card present (in-person sales); card not present (mail order / telephone order); and card not present (internet). Each method of acceptance poses different levels of risk to the issuing bank that the transaction may be fraudulent, and so the rates increase as risk increases. Interchange is expressed as a percentage of the transaction, and a transaction fee. An example Interchange rate is 2.05% + $0.10.

In certain environments, specifically businesses that sell to other businesses or to the government, special rates can be achieved if you follow the card association rules for those transaction types. We have a deep dive into what are called Level 2 and Level 3 transactions, and we suggest you read this Level 2 & Level 3 Processing FAQ for more detail on those data classifications.

In this FAQ, we’re going to take about how the various moving parts of a transaction – card type, acceptance method, dollar amount, data level, Merchant Category Code (MCC) and other factors – can work to your benefit to minimize costs. But beware, this gets geeky quickly.

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Large-Ticket Reductions*

You probably thought there were no more charts. Sorry to disappoint, but interchange reductions have a lot of influencing factors. Another is special pricing for Large Transactions – depending on several factors (of course) your larger sales can qualify for additional discounts. See the below chart for details.

Are you confused yet?

We get it, this is confusing stuff! That’s why we recommend using a solution that does the heavy lifting for you. Dharma offers the MX Merchant B2B App, so that your sales will automatically qualify for the lowest possible rates, no matter how you enter them.

It’s not common knowledge – but typically, merchants can save over half of a percent by following proper B2B processing guidelines. Usually, these guidelines can feel onerous – merchants are required to submit all sorts of additional data with each sale, which can be cumbersome, time-consuming, and very confusing. So most merchants simply don’t bother. The above charts are a testament to this!

That’s where the MX B2B app comes into play. With the MX B2B App, you don’t have to do anything special! Once enabled, you simply enter a sale into the MX Virtual Terminal like normal, and in the background we’ll populate any “missing” information. This ensures that you’ll always get the lowest rate on any given sale. No extra work, no extra hassle, no extra time spent

* All rates and thresholds were current as of March 2025, and are subject to change by Visa and Mastercard at any time.