COMCO ensures lower interchange fees for Visa cards
Bern, 24.07.2025 — COMCO settles with Visa on an average interchange fee rate of 0.15% for card-present domestic debit card payments. For the first time, COMCO also reduces cross-border interchange fees for debit and credit card payments from the EEA.
Card payments incur fees such as the interchange fee. COMCO has agreed with Visa that for payments made with Swiss debit cards at physical points of sale in Switzerland, the average interchange fee may not exceed 0.15%. Depending on the merchant category, either a base rate of no more than 0.2% or a reduced rate of no more than 0.12% for everyday consumer goods applies, combined with a cap of 36 centimes for payments of CHF 300 or more. This applies regardless of whether the payment is made using the physical card or a card stored on a mobile device such as a smartphone or smartwatch.
For domestic online debit card payments, the currently permitted rate will be lowered from 0.31% to 0.25% as of 1 November 2025.
For the first time in its practice, COMCO has also achieved for both debit and credit cards a reduction in cross-border interchange fees. For EEA-issued Visa cards used at Swiss merchants, the fee decreases from 1% to 0.2% for debit cards, and from 1.15% to 0.44% for credit cards. This measure will ease the financial burden on Swiss merchants by more than CHF 10 million per year.
The conclusion of the investigation against Visa comes about one year after COMCO reached a comparable solution with Mastercard. The 0.15% rate agreed with Visa is higher than the permitted Mastercard rate of 0.12%. However, unlike the arrangement with Mastercard, it also applies to payments made using mobile devices.