The “Acquirer License Fee” (ALF) is a Mastercard assessment fee that gets passed to businesses as part of the cost of credit card processing. The fee varies, but is often listed explicitly on processing statements. Let’s take a closer look at the fee and when it will be charged.
Visa and Mastercard both charge a Kilobyte Access Fee as one of their assessment fees for credit card processing. As of 2018, Visa’s fee is set at $0.0047 while Mastercard’s is $0.0035. The fee is charged for each authorization transaction submitted to the card network for settlement. Let’s look at what that means and how to determine your costs for the Kilobyte Access Fee.
There are actually two ‘versions’ of the Mastercard AVS Fee: Card-present and card-not-present. The fee is charged when your business utilizes the Address Verification Service to check that the address provided by a cardholder matches the address on file with the credit card company.
As of 2018, signatures are no longer required for credit card purchases. The four major credit cards let go of the requirement for cardholders to provide a signature for purchases when using a chip-enabled card.
Mastercard’s Card Validation Code 2 (CVC2) Fee is a charge that applies when you submit the CVC2 (three-digit code on the back of a customer’s card) with a transaction for authorization.
As the name implies, Mastercard’s Account Status Inquiry Fee is charged when a business requests information about the status of a cardholder’s account, such as whether the card is valid, but doesn’t actually charge the customer’s card.
The Mastercard Processing Integrity Fee is an “assessment fee” Mastercard charges to encourage businesses to adhere to correct authorization standards for transactions.
Wondering about the “digital enablement fee” on your credit card processing statement? Mastercard’s Digital Enablement Fee is a charge to businesses that accept card-not-present transactions, such as those made on ecommerce websites.
