Ask your processor for your rate and you'll hear about interchange and markup. You won't hear about the cross-border assessment: a separate network fee, typically 0.40% to 1.00%, applied to every transaction where the card was issued in a different country than the merchant account. Your processor doesn't set it, can't waive it, and usually buries it inside a blended "assessments" line. If you sell to Americans — in person near the border or online — you're paying it on every one of those sales.
What a cross-border fee is (and who charges it)
The fee is assessed by the card network (Visa, Mastercard), not your processor. It compensates the network for settling across borders and currencies. Because it's a network fee, it flows through every pricing model — flat-rate, tiered, interchange-plus — identically. Nobody can negotiate it away; the only question is which of the network's rates applies to each transaction. That depends on currency: whether the transaction is charged in the card's own currency or a different one.
Visa's table: 0.40% vs 0.80%
Visa splits foreign transactions into two buckets (per Moneris's published notice to merchants):
| Scenario (Canadian merchant) | Visa assessment |
|---|---|
| Multi-currency: US card charged in CAD (card's currency ≠ transaction currency) | 0.40% — card-present and card-not-present |
| Single-currency: US card charged in USD (card's currency = transaction currency), card-present | 0.80% |
| Single-currency: US card charged in USD, card-not-present (online) | 0.85% |
The counter-intuitive part: charging the American customer in their own currency costs you double the cross-border fee versus charging them in CAD. A Toronto shop that prices in USD for US tourists pays 0.80% on every one of those sales; priced in CAD, the same sale costs 0.40%.
Mastercard's table: 0.60% vs 1.00%
Mastercard raised its cross-border assessments in November 2018 and the structure has held since:
| Scenario (Canadian merchant) | Mastercard assessment |
|---|---|
| Billing in the cardholder's local currency (USD card → USD charge) | 0.60% |
| Billing in a different currency (USD card → CAD charge) | 1.00% |
Note Mastercard runs the opposite way from Visa: on Mastercard, charging in the customer's local currency is the cheaper path. This is exactly the kind of detail that makes a blended "assessments" line item impossible to audit without knowing the network tables. (Mastercard's base assessment underneath all of this is 9.81 basis points, and since November 2023 the networks' fees carry HST — interchange itself does not.)
What $5,000/month in US cards actually costs
Worked example: a Canadian merchant takes $5,000 a month on US-issued cards. The cross-border assessment alone — before interchange, before processor markup — costs: $20/month at Visa's 0.40% multi-currency rate · $40/month at Visa's 0.80% single-currency rate · $50/month at Mastercard's 1.00% rate. At $20,000 a month in US-card volume, that's $80–$200/month in pure network assessments: $960–$2,400 a year that appears on no rate sheet.
Rate currency note: the Visa figures above come from Moneris's June 2019 merchant notice and the Mastercard figures from the November 2018 increase — the published rate structure. Networks update schedules periodically; confirm current rates on the card brands' published interchange schedules. The structure (currency determines the rate; the processor can't waive it) does not change.
Can you avoid it? The exemption and the real options
Three mitigations exist, in descending order of practicality:
- Absorb it knowingly. Most merchants do this — but now you can price it into margins instead of discovering it on the statement.
- Price in the cheaper currency. For Visa, charge US customers in CAD (0.40% vs 0.80%); for Mastercard, charge them in USD (0.60% vs 1.00%). Online stores can implement this per card brand at checkout.
- The US–Canada cross-border acquiring exemption. In limited cases, a Canadian merchant can process US cards without the cross-border assessment through a qualifying cross-border acquiring setup. Eligibility is narrow — ask your processor specifically whether your account qualifies, and get the answer in writing.
What doesn't work: switching processors. The fee is identical at every processor because none of them sets it. A quote that looks cheaper on US-card volume is cutting markup somewhere else — or hiding the assessment line.
A note on structure: this is an explainer, not a procedure — the fee is set by the networks and there are no settings to change. The actionable part is the currency choice at checkout and the exemption question to put to your processor.
FAQ
Do I pay cross-border fees on Canadian cards?
No. The fee applies only when the card was issued in a different country than your merchant account. A Canadian card at a Canadian merchant carries no cross-border assessment.
Can my processor waive the cross-border fee?
No. It's assessed by Visa/Mastercard and passed through. Any processor can only change its own markup — the network fee is identical everywhere.
Is it cheaper to charge US customers in USD or CAD?
It depends on the network: Visa charges 0.40% when the currencies differ (USD card → CAD charge) versus 0.80–0.85% when they match; Mastercard charges 0.60% when they match versus 1.00% when they differ. Check which network dominates your US volume before choosing.