Merchants in the United States paid $110.32 billion in processing fees in 2020 to accept $7.630 trillion in credit and debit card purchase volume. Fees paid declined 5.2% from 2019.

Visa/Mastercard Credit
$61.63 billion fees, $2,776.21 billion purchase volume
Visa/Mastercard Debit
$22.60 billion fees, $3,138.74 billion purchase volume
American Express
$15.77 billion fees, $691.52 billion purchase volume
PIN Debit
$4.21 billion fees, $637.33 billion purchase volume
Discover
$3.11 billion fees, $142.80 billion purchase volume

Full access to the United States Merchant Processing Fees–2020 is available when you subscribe to the Nilson Report.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

22 Issues Each Year
Digital Versions
Industry Discounts

< BACK TO NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE

POSTED JUL 15, 2021 | PRINT

Merchant Processing Fees in the United States—2020

Please note: Only subscribers can access the charts included with this article.

General purpose and private label credit, debit and prepaid cards issued in the United States generated a combined $7.630 trillion in purchase volume in 2020, an increase of 0.6% over 2019. Merchants in the U.S. paid $110.32 billion in processing fees, a decrease of 5.2%, to accept those cards as payment for goods and services.

Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express brand credit cards and store, gasoline, medical and other types of private label credit cards combined generated $3.854 trillion in purchase volume last year, down 9.0% from 2019.

General purpose and private label credit cards combined accounted for 50.51% of all credit, debit and prepaid card purchase volume. This was a decline from 55.82% owing to the impact of Covid-19. To accept credit cards, merchants paid $83.51 billion in processing fees, down 9.9%. Credit cards accounted for 75.70% of total processing fees U.S. merchants paid in 2020, a drop from 79.60% the prior year.

Signature and PIN-based general purpose debit and prepaid cards combined generated $3.776 trillion in purchase volume, up 12.7%. Those cards accounted for 49.49% of all purchase volume for goods and services, including general purpose and private label credit cards.

Merchants paid $26.81 billion to accept those debit and prepaid cards. This was up 12.9% from 2019. Of the total processing fees merchants paid in 2020, debit and prepaid cards accounted for 24.30%, up from 20.40% the prior year.

As a percentage of purchase volume from all credit, debit and prepaid general purpose and private label cards, the weighted average of processing fees paid was 1.45% in 2020, down from 1.54% in 2019.

Prior issues: 1176, 1155, 1131, 1109