Payment Processing · Buyer guide
Argentina used to cap what a shop paid to take a card: 3% on credit and 1.5% on debit under article 15 of the Credit Card Law. Decree 70/2023 rewrote that article in December 2023, and it now only requires issuers to publish their financing rate. What the central bank (BCRA) still caps is interchange, the issuer's share of each sale: at most 0.60% on debit cards and 1.30% on credit cards, under its payment services rules as updated by Communication A 8303 of August 2025. Whatever a provider charges above that is its own margin.
Transfer payments by QR code are the exception. For these interoperable payments, built on the system the central bank launched as Transferencias 3.0, it sets the price a merchant pays directly. Here is what that means, with the providers' own published prices read on 1 November 2026. Most prices exclude IVA, the 21% value-added tax charged on the fee, and we say where a provider quotes otherwise.
The volumes show why this matters. In September 2026 Argentines made 123.9 million transfer payments in pesos, worth ARS 3.1 trillion, 70% more payments than a year earlier, and 99.1% of them started with a QR code. In August credit cards carried 147.8 million payments, down 18.1% on a year earlier, and debit cards 190.7 million, up 7.1%. The central bank had 93 interoperable wallets on its register.
Argentina has two kinds of card acceptance. Bank acquirers, mainly Fiserv (which runs the Posnet and Clover terminals) and Payway, sign you up through a bank and pay into a bank account. App providers such as Mercado Pago, Naranja X and Ualá Bis act as aggregators, sign you up in minutes and pay into their own account, at a much higher price.
Fiserv and Payway terminals also carry a monthly rental that neither publishes on the pages we read; Payway was offering new merchants a free terminal for 12 months in October 2026, and Banco Provincia offers free Fiserv and Payway terminals for 12 months to Cuenta DNI merchants. Ask for the rental in writing.
Take a shop selling ARS 4,000,000 a month by credit card in one payment, 200 sales of ARS 20,000, registered in Buenos Aires City. On the published rates, adding 21% IVA where the provider says it applies:
On debit the gap is just as wide: the same ARS 4,000,000 costs ARS 38,720 at Fiserv's 0.8% + IVA, ARS 58,080 on Naranja X Tap and ARS 144,716 on Mercado Pago Point with instant payout. A bank acquirer costs a fraction of an app reader, and the app's selling points are speed of sign-up and of payout. Against the central bank's caps, interchange alone on that credit card volume is at most ARS 52,000.
A shop can show one interoperable QR code and be paid from any registered wallet or bank app: Mercado Pago, MODO, Cuenta DNI from Banco Provincia, Ualá, Naranja X, BNA+ and others. When the customer pays from the money in their account, it is a transfer payment at the capped price and is credited at once. When the customer chooses a card inside the wallet, the merchant pays its card rate and waits the card payout term.
Fiserv notes one catch: a QR transfer payment cannot be refunded or reversed through the same channel, so refunds have to be made another way.
For a business abroad selling into Argentina, dLocal (B-) lists 3.49% on Argentine cards, 2.99% on cash vouchers (Pago Fácil and Rapipago) and 1.99% on bank transfers for its self-serve dLocal Go product, plus 21% local tax on the fee, in a price list posted in 2024. EBANX (B-) collects in Argentina with local payment methods and settles abroad, on prices it does not publish; its merchant terms say its local collection agent collects Argentina's VAT on the transaction. Rapyd (B-) says its purchase of PayU's Latin American business, completed in March 2025, lets it offer card acquiring in Argentina. Stripe (A) does not list Argentina among the countries where a business can open an account.
Article 37 of Law 25.065 obliges a merchant that has joined a card system to accept its credit cards and not to make price differences between cash and card transactions. Decree 70/2023 rewrote the contract and fee articles around it but left article 37 as it was, according to the official consolidated text.
Under Law 27.253 of 2016 and AFIP (now ARCA) General Resolution 3997-E of 2017, businesses registered for IVA that sell goods for final consumption, provide mass consumer services, carry out works or rent out movable goods, and monotributistas, must accept debit cards, non-bank prepaid cards and equivalent electronic payments in every transaction. The only exceptions are towns of fewer than 1,000 people and sales under ARS 10. Breaches are punished under article 13 of Law 27.253.
The central bank sets the longest a bank may take to pay a one-payment credit card sale: 5 business days for micro and small service stations, 8 for micro and small businesses and individuals, 10 for medium-sized businesses and for hotels, tourism, restaurants and health, and 18 for everyone else, counted from the sale and without interest or fees for those terms. Prepaid card sales must be paid in 2 business days, and an aggregator must pass card funds on within 1 business day of receiving them, except for e-commerce sales. Transfer payments must be made available to the merchant within 15 seconds.
Since 1 September 2024, card acquirers and payment processors no longer withhold IVA or income tax from settlements, after AFIP General Resolution 5554/2024 repealed those regimes. Provincial gross-income tax still comes off: under SIRTAC, the Comisión Arbitral's system for card and digital-payment settlements, each province sets the rate per taxpayer, and SIRTAC collected ARS 177,798 million in September 2026 alone. Fiserv's QR help page still lists IVA and Ganancias withholdings, so check what your statement actually deducts.
For the rest of Latin America, see our guides to card fees in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.
