Rule changes that affect what you pay
Regulators in the UK, Australia and the EU are all changing how card scheme fees are set, explained and checked, and the schemes keep adding fees of their own. Each explainer states what changed, who it affects, the dates and what to check now. The UK PSR explainer is live; the others follow.
Explainers you can read now
The PSR's scheme fee directions are the first explainer because they carry fixed dates for UK acquirers and PSPs: pricing governance from November 2026 and fee logic for reconciling invoices to transactions from July 2027 (PSR PS26/1, July 2026). The explainer carries a review date and is updated when the rules move.
Explainers coming later
These rule changes each alter a line on someone's invoice, and each will get its own explainer. The summaries below give the one fact that matters most today, with its source, so you can follow the primary material in the meantime.
| Rule change | What it does | Status |
|---|---|---|
| RBA scheme fee roadmaps | The Reserve Bank of Australia requires scheme fee roadmaps with machine-readable invoices and error remediation by 1 April 2027 (RBA conclusions, March 2026). | Explainer coming later |
| EU scheme fee investigation | The European Commission widened its antitrust inquiry into Visa and Mastercard scheme, processing and market development fees in 2025, asking about fees charged from 2017 to 2024 (RTE). | Explainer coming later |
| UK to EEA cross-border interchange | Online interchange between the UK and EEA rose from 0.2% and 0.3% to 1.15% and 1.5% after Brexit, and the High Court upheld the PSR's power to cap it in January 2026 (FStech). | Explainer coming later |
| Visa VAMP | Visa's Acquirer Monitoring Program has charged acquirers $4 or $8 per fraudulent or disputed transaction above its thresholds since April 2025 (Visa VAMP fact sheet). | Explainer coming later |
| India UPI merchant fee | NPCI will apply a 0.4% MDR, capped at ₹300, to UPI merchant payments above ₹2,000 from 15 October 2026 (Al Jazeera). | Explainer coming later |
Start with one month of your own data.
A pilot begins with the agreements that protect both sides, then your contracts and one month of settlement data, scoped with a payments specialist on the first call. The 30-day diagnostic re-costs every transaction against them and shows each variance with its clause, before any recurring fee.