Industry · Payment Processing
On 4 September 2026 Visa Canada published a two-page bulletin that most of the merchants it affects will never read. From 24 October the Small Merchant Interchange Program, which since October 2024 has given businesses under $300,000 a year of Visa volume a lower rate on domestic consumer credit cards, will take businesses up to $750,000. At the same time the small-merchant rate on an ordinary Classic, Gold or Platinum card tapped in a shop falls from 0.77% to 0.70%, and the online rate from 1.30% to 1.20%. Mastercard's schedule effective 1 August 2026 still defines a small business as one with under $175,000 of Mastercard credit volume, and we found no bulletin changing it.
That is the second cut to the program rate since it began, after October 2025 took it from 0.81% to 0.77%, and the pattern of the first cut is what this article is about. When interchange fell on 19 October 2024, Stripe told its Canadian customers on standard pricing that 'our standard price will remain the same', and explained why. Square cut its rates two days later and said why. Both are documented on the companies' own pages. Here is what the networks actually charge now and from 24 October, what each processor did with the last reduction, and the rule in the Code of Conduct that lets you leave a processor that keeps the next one.
The Department of Finance announced the deal with Visa and Mastercard on 18 May 2023 and confirmed it in force in a release of 17 October 2024. A business qualifies with Visa if its annual Visa volume is $300,000 or less, counting credit, debit and prepaid cards, and with Mastercard if its Mastercard credit volume is under $175,000; the two are assessed separately, so a shop can be inside one program and outside the other. For qualifying businesses, domestic consumer credit interchange in store fell to an annual weighted average of 0.95%, and online by 10 basis points. The government's release put the number of businesses covered at more than 90% of those that accept credit cards, the reduction at up to 27% from the previous weighted average, and the saving at about $1 billion over five years. Its two worked examples were a store with $300,000 of annual card sales saving about $1,080 a year and one with $120,000 saving about $432.
The same release said the government 'expects all members of the credit card industry, including payment processors, to pass these savings on directly to small businesses'. Expects is the operative word. Nothing in the agreement requires a processor to change its price, and the revised Code of Conduct, discussed below, requires only that a processor tell you when it does not.
Visa's program guide answers the practical questions. Enrolment is automatic: 'Visa and acquirers have partnered to identify eligible merchants. This defined list of merchants will automatically be enrolled.' The volume that counts is 'total Visa sales volume for Canada domestic and cross-border transactions completed with a Visa credit, debit, or prepaid product', across every processor you use; TD Merchant Solutions' notice to its merchants adds that totals are determined by the networks, not by individual acquirers, so splitting volume between two processors does not keep you under the line. The guide says membership runs for 12 months beginning each April; Moneris's program page and TD's notice both say the qualifying year is now 1 October to 30 September, and TD says the expanded threshold is assessed on volume from 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025. Moneris adds three conditions the guide does not: a merchant that surcharges does not qualify for Visa's program, a merchant with a negotiated or lower industry rate does not qualify, and a merchant found ineligible after the annual check can have 'any interchange savings previously provided under the Program' reversed.
Visa publishes its Canadian interchange in a downloadable schedule and Mastercard publishes its own, effective 1 August 2026; the acquirers reprint both. The figures below are from Fiserv Canada's rate sheet of 1 May 2026 and Visa's program guide for today's Visa rates, Mastercard's own schedule for Mastercard, and Visa's bulletin of 4 September 2026 for the October changes. All are domestic consumer credit; Interac and Amex are separate and covered further down.
Put those through a business with $250,000 a year of Visa card-present sales on ordinary consumer cards. At the standard 1.25% the interchange is $3,125. In the program today it is $1,925. From 24 October it is $1,750, and a business with $600,000 of Visa sales that has been paying the standard rate all along joins the program for the first time. Visa's network assessment fees sit on top of every one of those figures and are not in the interchange table; TD's notices show them changing separately, and they are the reason an interchange-plus statement never quite matches the schedule.
Rates below were read from each provider's Canadian pricing page on 21 September 2026 and are in Canadian dollars. The grade in brackets is our review grade, and where our review covers the US product, the Canadian rates here differ from the ones it quotes.
Two more data points, from outside the site's reviews. TD Merchant Solutions, the acquiring arm of TD in Canada, states on its fee-change page that it passes network fees through at 100%, and its notice for the October change lists every adjusted rate, with a cancellation deadline of 10 January 2027 beside the one increase in it, the business-card rate; that is the Code at work. And Jane, whose practice-management software for physiotherapists and other clinics includes its own Jane Payments, cut its terminal rate from 2.65% to 2.5% in October 2024 and left its online rate at 2.75%, explaining that the networks had only cut online rates by 10 basis points. That is the honest arithmetic of a flat rate: a cut of up to 44 basis points in store funded a 15-point price cut, and a 10-point cut online funded nothing.
The program does not touch debit, and debit in Canada does not work like credit. Interac charges no percentage interchange. A chip-and-PIN transaction carries no interchange at all; a contactless Flash transaction costs 3.5¢ at a standard merchant, 2¢ at quick-service restaurants and a few other categories, and 5.5¢ between $100.01 and $250. On top sits a network switch fee that Moneris lists at $0.015803 per transaction since November 2025 and that TD says rises to $0.0163 on 1 November 2026, giving its merchants until 10 January 2027 to cancel over it.
So the wholesale cost of a $100 debit tap is about a nickel. Square charges 82¢ for it. Stripe and Shopify charge 15¢, Moneris 12¢, Helcim between 10.5¢ and 12.5¢, Paystone from 5¢. For a café where half the taps are debit, the Interac line is a bigger difference between processors than the credit rate, and it is the line the small-merchant program does nothing about.
The Code of Conduct for the Payment Card Industry in Canada was rewritten alongside the interchange agreement. The new version took effect on 30 October 2024, with its notice and cancellation provisions following on 30 April 2025, and it binds the networks, acquirers and what it calls downstream participants, which the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada's summary spells out as payment processors, payment facilitators and aggregators. Square and Stripe are inside it.
Three provisions matter here. Your processor must give you 30 to 60 calendar days' notice before 'a fee increase, introduction of a new fee, or any reduction to PCNO core fees that are not passed on in full to merchants', and the notice must tell you that you may cancel. You may then cancel without penalty within 70 calendar days of the change taking effect, and immediately if you did not get the notice. The exception is an increase you already agreed to on a schedule, such as the end of a promotional rate or a volume tier. And complaints must be acknowledged within five business days and investigated within 20.
The wording on reductions is the one to keep. A network cut that your processor does not pass on in full is, under the Code, a notifiable event that opens the 70-day window, the same as a price rise. If your flat-rate processor's October notice, if it sends one, says its rate is unchanged, that is your exit. Our guide to leaving a processor after a fee change covers the US position, where no such rule exists; Canadian merchants have a better one and mostly do not know it. The monthly statement the Code requires, showing your effective merchant discount rate, interchange and network fees separately, is where you check whether the October rate landed. How to read one is the same on both sides of the border.
Since 6 October 2022 Visa and Mastercard have allowed Canadian merchants to surcharge credit cards, capped at the lesser of 2.4% and your own average cost of accepting the card, with 30 days' written notice to your acquirer and disclosure at the point of sale and on the receipt. Debit and prepaid cannot be surcharged, and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business notes that Quebec's consumer-protection law keeps the option from consumer-facing merchants there. Two things cut against it for a small business. Moneris's program page says a merchant that surcharges does not qualify for Visa's small-merchant program at all, so the surcharge costs you the lower rate. And a business in the program on interchange-plus pricing has a cost of acceptance well under the cap, which is the point: as the program widens, the honest surcharge shrinks.
None of this is hidden. Visa published the bulletin, the acquirers reprinted it, and Stripe and Square each wrote down what they did last time. The saving is real and it is arriving on 24 October; whether it arrives at your business is, as it was in 2024, a matter of which price you agreed to.
