by Ben Dwyer The commercial debit and commercial prepaid card not present interchange categories determine the interchange fee a business will pay for accepting those card types.
Sometimes abbreviated “CNP,” card not present refers to any method of accepting a card where the card isn’t swiped, dipped, or tapped to a card terminal. It can include online payments (such as electronic invoices or online shopping carts / checkouts) as well as “keyed” cards where you enter the card details into a secure web form.
- Commercial Debit and Prepaid CNP Rates
- Qualification for Commercial Debit and Prepaid CNP
- Commercial Card Not Present Business Debit – Regulated and Unregulated
- Commercial Cards on Processing Statements
Commercial Debit and Prepaid CNP Rates
Contrary to popular belief, debit and prepaid cards do not simply incur a “flat” fee. There is a percentage based volume rate and a per-transaction fee.
There are two commercial CNP rates for debit and prepaid, but one is just the “regulated” version – that is, the capped rate that applies to debit cards issued by banks with $10 billion or more in assets. The rates are pulled from Visa’s interchange matrix, available in full on the Visa website.
| Volume Rate | Per-Transaction Fee | |
| Commercial Card Not Present – Business and Purchasing Prepaid |
2.65% | $0.10 |
| Commercial Card Not Present – Regulated Business and Purchasing Prepaid |
0.05% | $0.22 |
Rates subject to change.
Qualification for Commercial Debit and Prepaid CNP
Technically, there’s only two requirements for these interchange categories: use of a commercial Visa debit or commercial Visa prepaid card, and a relevant CPS qualification.
However, CPS qualification itself has several requirements, so there are actually more criteria to meet than it seems.
What is CPS Qualification?
Visa’s Custom Payment Service (CPS) is a set of rules that transactions must meet in order to qualify for CPS interchange rates. In some situations, like commercial debit / prepaid, the interchange category itself isn’t a CPS category, but still requires meeting the criteria of CPS programs.
For the purposes of Commercial Card Not Present, transactions must be eligible for one of the following CPS programs:
- Card Not Present
- E-commerce Basic
- E-commerce Preferred
- Hotel Card Not Present or E-commerce
- Car Rental Card Not Present or E-commerce
- Passenger Transport Card Not Present or E-commerce
Commercial Card Not Present Business Debit – Regulated and Unregulated
The only difference between the debit and debit regulated categories is the size of the bank that issued the debit card. When banks with $10 billion or more in assets (such as Bank of America) issue debit cards, those cards are considered “regulated.” A regulated debit card is capped at interchange by law. That means that regulated debit cards can cost no more than 0.05% + 22 cents for an interchange fee.
Unregulated debit cards (those issued by smaller banks) are not subject to that interchange cap.
Note that in either case, the cap only applies on interchange fees. It does not apply to the fees your processor adds. In other words, the fact that there’s a cap on the interchange fee doesn’t mean that is the maximum amount you will pay. Both regulated and unregulated debit transactions will still cost more once the processor’s markup is factored in.
Commercial Cards on Processing Statements
When reviewing your monthly processing statement, you may see numerous interchange categories. The commercial card not present debit and prepaid categories will be listed if you took a commercial debit or prepaid card in that month.
Some of the known aliases / abbreviations for these categories include:
- CNP BUSDB (for “card not present business debit”)
- CNP BUSDBR (for “card not present business debit regulated”)
- CNP COMMPP (for “card not present commercial prepaid”)
However, this is not a full list of the possible names. Different processors can (and do) use their own terms to refer to interchange categories on the monthly processing statements.
Note that you will not see interchange categories on some types of statements, such as flat rate pricing offered by companies like Stripe and PayPal.
