Swipe Fees Reach $198 Billion as Merchants Escalate Fight Against Interchange Costs

The swipe fees on transactions from credit and debit cards reached a record amount of $198.25 billion in 2025, according to a new press release from the Merchants Payments Coalition. That figure represents more than a $10 billion increase over 2024 when swipe fees came in at $187.2 billion. 

And the bulk of those charges comes from credit cards, not debit cards. In fact, swipe fees in 2025 on credit card transactions totaled $157.8 billion, the coalition said. 

Of course, merchants would like to pay less in fees. After all, many business owners struggle to grow their operations while keeping expenses in check. And according to the Merchants Payments Coalition, swipe fees on credit and debit card transactions can be among the highest operating costs a merchant faces after those for labor.

To learn more about increases in swipe fees and how they impact merchants, we caught up with Doug Kantor, National Association of Convenience Stores General Counsel and Executive Committee Member of the Merchants Payments Coalition.

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The coalition first began tracking credit and debit card swipe fee figures in 2009. Swipe fee totals came in at $62.1 billion that year. Kantor told us that a number of factors have contributed to the boost of total swipe fee figures over the years.

Of the $198.25 billion in 2025 card swipe fees, $157.8 billion came from credit cards.

One factor is price changes from Visa and Mastercard, he revealed. The Merchants Payments Coalition disclosed in its release that the average swipe fee rate on transactions from Visa and Mastercard-branded credit cards was 2.35% of the amount of a purchase in 2024, but that rose to 2.36% in 2025.

“In addition to [price increases by Visa and Mastercard], there’s always some amount of inflation, and — because most of the fee is a percentage of the purchase price — that inflation then gets reflected in higher interchange fees,” he explained.

“And we’ve seen higher credit card usage over time as well, especially since the pandemic,” Kantor added. “So you put all those things together, and the increases have been pretty staggering.”

The Electronic Payments Coalition recently released a study that counters the message that the Merchants Payments Coalition has pushed around swipe fees.

Some supporters of the Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA) believe it could lead to lower interchange fees, but the act has had difficulty getting off the ground in 2026. Should the CCCA pick up momentum, Kantor told us that the votes are there to pass it into law.

“An overwhelming majority of members of Congress support it and would support it if it came up for a vote, just like overwhelming numbers of the public support it,” he said. “We’ve polled this many, many times, and it’s got a 40- or 50-point spread in terms of those who support it compared to those who don’t.” 

But if the CCCA reduces costs for merchants, that doesn’t necessarily mean consumers will benefit.

“The evidence from more than a decade of experience with the Durbin Amendment is clear: government-mandated price caps on debit interchange did not lower prices for consumers,” Tom Rosenkoetter, Executive Director of the American Bankers Association’s Card Policy Council, told us when reached for comment.

“Instead, large retailers kept the savings while consumers faced fewer banking choices, reduced rewards, and higher costs elsewhere,” he added.

Supporters of the Credit Card Competition Act believe it will ultimately reduce interchange fees.

Merchants do have a tool at their disposal they can use to gain control over swipe fees. They can pass those costs on to customers who elect to pay with a credit card, provided the merchant isn’t operating their business in a state where it’s illegal to surcharge customers for card payments.

But Kantor told us some businesses are reluctant to put surcharges on card transactions because they fear doing so may cause them to lose customers.

Financial institutions, merchants, and payment networks all have a role to play in making credit card payments both convenient and safe for consumers and businesses. But they each have their own interests to protect as well.

Stakeholders in the payments industry may not agree on whether interchange fees should continue to rise as inflation increases and people use their credit cards more often. For Kantor, it’s clear that change is necessary when it comes to swipe fees.

“Nobody says things should be free — that’s not part of the conversation at all,” Kantor told us. “But things should be somewhat fair. You should have options in the market, ways to negotiate. And if that happens, everybody feels like they can hold their own. But we’ve got to get there in this sector.”