Payment Processing · Buyer guide
Chile spent most of the last decade dismantling a card monopoly. Until 2020 Transbank, owned by the country's large card-issuing banks, was in effect the only acquirer of bank-card payments for Chilean shops. On 1 April 2020 it moved to the four-party model used in most card markets, a 2021 law put a ceiling on the fee card issuers collect, and the Financial Market Commission (CMF) now lists ten registered card operators, including Mercado Pago, SumUp, Getnet, Kushki and Transbank itself.
Here is what that competition has done to the price of a card payment, read from the providers' own Chilean pages on 28 October 2026, and the rules that decide what you must accept and what you may charge. Every price below is before IVA unless stated: Chilean providers quote their fees plus 19% IVA, so a 2% fee costs you 2.38%.
Law 21.365 created a committee that sets the maximum interchange, the part of each payment that goes to the card issuer. Its final limits, published in April 2023, came in two steps. As reported by Diario Financiero and Chócale, the caps reached after the first step, which remain in force, are 0.50% on debit cards, 1.14% on credit cards and 0.94% on prepaid cards. The second step, due in October 2024, would have cut them to 0.35%, 0.80% and 0.80%.
It never happened. A committee resolution published in the Diario Oficial on 1 October 2024 opened a review of the limits and, as a provisional measure, kept the maximum rates at the level then in force until the review ends. In December 2025 the Finance Ministry ended the contract for the impact study behind that review, citing the time elapsed and incomplete execution, and said it would hire a new consultancy. We found no new limits as of October 2026.
Two limits on the caps matter to a merchant. The law covers cards issued and operated by entities supervised by the CMF and regulated by the central bank, which reads as Chilean-issued cards: a tourist's card is not obviously covered. And the committee chose not to set different limits for premium cards, for different kinds of business, or for in-person and online payments.
TUU, from Haulmer, publishes rates from 0.59% + CLP 65 that vary with how fast you are paid, but its page does not make clear which rate goes with which payout option, so we have left it out of the comparison.
Take a corner shop that takes 150 debit card payments a month of CLP 10,000 each: CLP 1.5 million of takings, below every provider's first volume tier. On the published rates, before IVA:
The cheapest and dearest differ by more than CLP 23,000 a month, about CLP 280,000 a year before IVA. Two things drive it. Klap and Transbank price debit cards far below credit cards, as the lower debit cap would lead you to expect. At this volume SumUp and the Point Mini charge debit and credit the same, and the Point Smart 2 only half a point less. The gap narrows on credit cards, where Klap's CLP 78 + 1.39% and Transbank's 2.29% face Mercado Pago's 2.69%, and on larger tickets, where Klap's fixed CLP 78 counts for less. Instant payout, which Mercado Pago includes, is the main thing the higher prices buy.
Chilean shoppers often split a credit card purchase into interest-free instalments (cuotas sin interés), and the merchant pays for it. Mercado Pago adds 1.99% for 3 instalments, 3.49% for 6, 4.99% for 9 and 6.99% for 12, on top of its credit card rate. Flow charges 1.99% for 2 to 3 instalments, 3.49% for 4 to 6 and 6.99% for 7 to 12 on Webpay payments. Offering 12 instalments on a CLP 100,000 sale on a Mercado Pago reader can therefore cost you over 9% of the sale.
Larger and cross-border merchants have other options. Kushki (B-), a registered Chilean card operator, quotes per account and sets a default minimum of US$1,000 a month in fees; the rate card its Chilean operator publishes lists 1.0% to 2.0% on debit, 2.0% to 2.95% on credit and 2.90% to 3.00% on international cards, plus IVA. dLocal (B-), which lets foreign businesses take Chilean payments, lists 2.99% on cards in Chile for its self-serve dLocal Go product, plus 19% local tax on the fee; its enterprise pricing, like EBANX's (B-), is negotiated. Stripe (A) does not list Chile among the countries where a business can open an account.
In a ruling of 7 June 2024, the Supreme Court rewrote part of the competition tribunal's general instruction on the card market (ICG No. 5). The card brands must now apply a no-surcharge rule, and the ruling says merchants may not impose surcharges on card transactions, whether in person or online. The same ruling requires the brands to apply an honour-all-products rule.
SERNAC, the consumer agency, held in a 2025 interpretive ruling on fast-food outlets that cash has unlimited discharging power under article 31 of the central bank's organic law, Law 18.840, and that refusing it is an unjustified refusal to sell, breaching article 13 of the consumer protection law, Law 19.496. Bills in Congress would cap large cash payments, and another would write a right to pay by any lawful means into the consumer law; none has been enacted.
SII Resolution 53 of 2025 sets out what you hand a customer after an in-person sale. A cash or bank transfer payment needs a printed or virtual boleta. A card payment needs the boleta or the card voucher, depending on how your business issues receipts; SII allows a business to elect not to issue a boleta for electronically paid sales, so the voucher stands in for it. The rule took effect on 1 May 2025 for businesses with printing devices and on 1 March 2026 for the rest. Ask your provider whether its terminal supports the voucher route before you rely on it.
The central bank's 2026 payment systems report found that digital payments grew 15% since its previous report, to 435 a year for each person over 15, and that debit cards remain the most used payment method. Cash stays important in the regions, at street markets, on public transport and for purchases under CLP 10,000, which is the ticket size where a fixed fee per payment, or a flat rate built for credit cards, costs a shop the most.
For the rest of Latin America, see our guides to card fees in Mexico, Colombia and Brazil.
