Payment Processing · Buyer guide
When a customer in a Mexican shop pays with a domestic credit card, the bank that issued the card earns 1.53% of the sale in interchange, under the schedule Mexico's banks register with the Banco de México, and no more than 1.76% in any category. On a debit card the most is 1.15%, and never more than MX$13.50 a sale. In some kinds of business, corner shops, hardware stores, beauty salons, doctors and dentists among them, the registered interchange is zero on both. These are rates the banks set among themselves and register with Banxico, not legal caps, and they do not cover American Express or cards issued abroad. The newest credit schedule Banxico has published dates from June 2013; its summary page still shows an older 1.91% figure from 2008.
The shop pays something else. It pays its provider's discount rate, and at the aggregators that sign a small business up online, that is about 3% to 4% of the sale, plus 16% IVA on the commission, before anyone counts a single meses sin intereses sale. This guide sets out what each provider publishes, read from its own Mexican pages on 8 October 2026, puts the published rates on one basis, and explains the three things that set Mexico apart: IVA on the fee, the instalment surcharge, and a law that forbids passing any of it to the customer.
Mexico's banks also sell terminals, mostly on a quote. BBVA México publishes a fee sheet: a 2.15% + IVA discount rate on its portable terminal, a MX$300 affiliation fee, a MX$1,500 one-off charge per terminal, MX$0.42 a transaction for the mobile connection, MX$150 a month for each additional terminal, and a MX$359 monthly penalty when card sales fall under MX$25,000. The same sheet notes that BBVA no longer offers that product to the public. Treat it as an indication of what a bank terminal can look like, not as an offer.
Banxico publishes the discount rates merchants pay each acquirer and aggregator, by type of business. For retail businesses on credit cards in July 2026, the average was 2.14% at BBVA, 2.20% at Banorte and 2.25% at Getnet, against 3.33% at Mercado Pago, 3.40% at Conekta, 3.49% at PayPal, 3.54% at Stripe and 3.54% at Clip. The most common rate charged by both Clip and Stripe was 3.60%, their standard percentage before IVA and fixed fees.
Two cautions. Banxico's tables do not say whether the rates exclude IVA or fold in fixed per-transaction fees, so read them as reported discount rates, not all-in costs; the modal 3.60% matches Clip's and Stripe's list percentage before IVA and without the fixed fee. And the gap is not simply a markup. A bank terminal can come with an affiliation fee, monthly minimums and connectivity fees, as BBVA's sheet shows, while an aggregator signs you up in minutes with nothing but a phone. What the table does show is that the lowest headline rate a small business can find online is not the lowest rate in the market.
The zero-interchange categories make the gap plainer still. At a corner shop, a hardware store or a beauty salon, the registered interchange on a domestic card is 0%, on credit and debit alike. Clip's average debit discount rate in the miscellaneous category in July 2026 was 3.60%. On a debit card at a corner shop, almost none of what the shop pays goes to the card's bank. The debit schedule was last registered in May 2019.
Online, most providers add a fixed fee to every sale, and Mercado Pago lets you trade payout speed for rate.
Take a shop or café taking MX$80,000 a month on cards, 400 sales at an average of MX$200, all on Mexican credit and debit cards with no instalments. On the published rates, including 16% IVA on the commission:
On MX$200 sales, Clip's MX$1 fixed fee makes its 2.99% almost exactly the same as Mercado Pago's 3.50%: about MX$8.10 a sale either way. Below an average sale of about MX$196 the flat 3.50% is cheaper; above it, Clip is. A new Clip user at this volume moves up to Plata, and saves about MX$186 a month.
Take the same MX$80,000 online, 400 orders of MX$200, again including IVA:
The fixed fee is what reorders this list. On a MX$200 order, Mercado Pago's MX$4 is two full percentage points of the sale, and Conekta's and Stripe's MX$3 is a point and a half. A business with larger average orders closes most of that gap, and should rerun the sums on its own ticket size.
Every provider here lets a customer split a larger credit-card purchase into interest-free monthly instalments, meses sin intereses. The customer pays no interest because the merchant does. Clip, Mercado Pago, Conekta and PayPal add an instalment surcharge to the base rate, and IVA applies to the total.
Mercado Pago's surcharges run from 4.69% for 3 months to 27.29% for 24, and its reader page says the instalment rate is added to the base rate. Clip's own calculator applies 4.57% for 3 months to 27.17% for 24. Conekta prices by the issuing bank, from 3.5% for 3 months on most banks' cards to 26.5% for 24 months on a BBVA card. PayPal adds 4.49% for 3 months to 18.99% for 24 months, the last only on Citibanamex cards. Stripe lists 5% for 3 months to 22.5% for 24 as additional fees, but does not say on the page how they combine with its 3.6% + MX$3; ask before you rely on it. At the top end the cost is larger than the surcharge alone suggests: a 24-month sale at Mercado Pago's Point costs 3.50% plus 27.29%, plus IVA, or about 35.7% of the sale.
On a MX$6,000 sale split over 12 months, that comes to about MX$1,098 at Clip, MX$1,141 at Mercado Pago, MX$1,149 at PayPal online, and MX$999 to MX$1,221 at Conekta depending on the bank, all including IVA. That is about 17% to 20% of the sale. Offering instalments sells more, but it is a discount you are funding, and it belongs in the price you set for the item rather than in the card fee you hope to absorb.
A US business can often add a surcharge to recover its card costs, within the limits set out in the site's guide to card surcharge rules. A Mexican business cannot. Article 7 Bis of the Ley Federal de Protección al Consumidor requires the advertised price to include taxes, commissions and any other charge the customer has to pay, and PROFECO said in a bulletin on 30 July 2025 that charging a commission for paying by credit or debit card violates the law and that no business may charge extra for using the terminal. Clip's contract with its merchants forbids it too. The card fee, like the instalment surcharge, comes out of your margin.
A business outside Mexico that wants to sell to Mexican customers with local cards, OXXO cash and SPEI usually goes through a cross-border provider rather than opening a Mexican account. EBANX (B-) supports OXXO Pay, SPEI and Carnet cards in Mexico but publishes no pricing. dLocal (B-) gives USD 0.20 + 2.49% for Mexican cards in its dLocal Go price list, a 2024 PDF that lists 16% tax on top; dLocal Go's pricing page now returns an error, so ask for a current quote. Brazil, Mexico's larger neighbour in Latin American payments, works differently again: the site's guide to Pix explains why instant bank transfer, not cards, now dominates there.
Inside Mexico, the bank-transfer alternative is cheap but less convenient. The Banco de México's CoDi, which lets a customer pay by scanning a code in their banking app, carries no additional commissions, according to Banxico, and SPEI through a gateway costs MX$7 at Stripe and MX$12.50 at Conekta, plus IVA, regardless of the sale's size.
Once you are trading, check what you pay against what you were quoted. The site's guide to reading a merchant processing statement is written for US statements, but the lines to check are the same: the rate, the fixed fees and anything charged by the month.
