Interac fees: what merchants pay to accept debit

Interac fees, for a merchant, are what you pay to accept Interac Debit at your till: a flat amount per transaction rather than a percentage of the sale. Interac says Interac Debit "offers a single flat fee regardless of purchase price" and puts the cost to merchants at around 10 cents per transaction. Underneath that, Interac's fee page says interchange on Interac Debit is currently set at zero, with a small flat amount on tap payments.

Searches for "Interac fees" also turn up Interac e-Transfer, which is a different product with different fees, set by your bank. We cover the merchant side here: what debit costs you, how it compares with credit, what your statement should show and whether you can pass the fee on. The e-Transfer section near the end points you to our full guide.

What does it cost a merchant to accept Interac Debit?

Around 10 cents a transaction, all in, by Interac's estimate. That figure has two parts: interchange, which Interac sets and publishes, and your processor's fee, which your agreement sets.

Interac's fee page lists other tap tiers for low-ticket and high-volume merchants, so ask your processor which tier your business falls in. The 5.5 cent tier applies to everyone on sales from $100.01 to $250.

Interac Debit has a second cost advantage that doesn't show up as a line on your statement. Interac says there are zero chargebacks with Interac Debit, because each payment is approved by the customer's bank in real time against money already in their account. A debit sale can't come back to you months later the way a disputed credit sale can.

To accept Interac at all, Interac says you have to connect with an acquirer, which in practice means a payment processor. Our guide to what Interac is covers how the network works, and our guide to Interac Flash covers tap limits.

What does Interac cost a small business in a month?

It depends on how many debit sales you take, not how much they add up to. Here's a made-up month for a pharmacy in Halifax with 2,000 Interac Debit sales, using the tap tiers that apply to most merchants:

If the pharmacy's all-in price matched Interac's estimate of around 10 cents a transaction, its Interac bill would be about $200 for the month. Interchange is $54.50 of that. The other $145.50 or so is the processor's fee.

That's the useful takeaway. Interchange on Interac is set by Interac and is the same whoever processes for you, so the number to compare and negotiate is your processor's per-transaction fee.

How are Interac fees different from credit card fees?

Interac is priced per transaction; credit cards are priced as a percentage of the sale. So the gap between them grows with every dollar on the receipt. For the credit side, our page on how credit card processing fees are built breaks out each layer.

The table shows interchange alone on three sale sizes. The credit rates are Visa's published in-store rates from its Canadian interchange schedule and Mastercard's chip or tap rate from its schedule effective August 1, 2026:

The catch is that Interac's advantage shrinks on small tickets. Compare Interac's 10 cent estimate with Visa Classic interchange at 1.25%:

At a cafe, debit is cheaper, but not by much. At a hardware store in Winnipeg, every sale paid by debit instead of a Visa Classic card saves the store close to a dollar. Say 100 sales a month make that switch: that's about $96 a month, or $1,155 a year, before counting the processor's fees on credit. The bigger your tickets, the more debit is worth to you.

Small-business interchange rates narrow the gap a little. Visa's small-merchant rate for Classic cards is 0.77%, falling to 0.70% on October 24, 2026, and our guide to credit card fees in Canada explains who qualifies. Even at 0.70%, an $85 credit sale carries about 60 cents of interchange.

Why might you pay more than 10 cents for Interac?

Because your processor sets your price, and not every processor prices debit as a flat fee. Interac's estimate assumes a per-transaction price. If your agreement charges debit as a percentage of the sale, you lose most of debit's cost advantage.

Say a store takes 1,500 Interac sales averaging $45, or $67,500 in debit:

That's $187.50 a month, $2,250 a year, for pricing a flat-fee product as a percentage. If you see a percentage next to your Interac line, ask your processor to explain it in writing.

Other things that push your real debit cost up:

• Monthly minimums that charge you for volume you didn't run.
• Terminal rental or per-batch fees that sit outside the per-transaction price.
• Co-badged cards running on the other network. A customer can pay with Visa Debit or Debit Mastercard instead of Interac, for example by picking that card in a phone wallet. In the same Visa and Mastercard schedules cited above, the "Electronic" interchange rate is 3 cents a transaction for Visa Debit and 0.25% plus 5 cents for Debit Mastercard, so check how your processor prices each. We explain the difference in our guide to Visa Debit in Canada.

On our interchange-plus pricing, debit and credit show up as separate lines, so you can see exactly what each Interac transaction costs.

Can you charge customers a fee for paying with Interac?

Only in a narrow way, and never in Quebec. Interac's fee rules say "the surcharge fee must be capped at $0.25" and that merchants "may not directly apply a surcharge" for using Interac Debit (Interac). That means no percentage-based fee on debit sales at your till. Any fee has to go through your acquirer, and it can't exceed 25 cents.

The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada puts it this way: "You should contact your payment processor about your ability to surcharge for accepting debit card payments. Some networks don't allow merchants to do so" (FCAC). Here's how the rules line up:

The credit card limits come from Visa Canada and Mastercard, and both bar surcharges on their debit and prepaid cards. In Quebec, the Office de la protection du consommateur says merchants may not charge a fee for paying by debit or credit card (OPC).

Our view: a debit fee is rarely worth it. A 25 cent charge on a payment that costs you around a dime annoys customers far more than it earns. If you want to steer people toward debit, a discount works better, and the Code of Conduct for the Payment Card Industry in Canada lets merchants offer discounts for different payment methods. Our guide to credit card surcharges in Canada covers the credit side in full.

What are Interac e-Transfer fees?

They're whatever your bank or credit union charges. Interac says e-Transfer fees are set by financial institutions, so they vary with where you bank, and it points businesses to their own financial institution for details (Interac). There's no interchange, because an e-Transfer moves money between bank accounts rather than running on a card.

For a business, e-Transfer fits invoices, deposits and payments from other businesses better than the checkout counter. Interac says e-Transfer for Business transactions can be for up to $25,000, depending on your financial institution and account type (Interac). When you compare banks, ask for three numbers in writing: the fee to receive a transfer, the fee to send a payment request, and the monthly cost of any e-Transfer for Business plan. Our guide to how to accept e-Transfer covers setup, Autodeposit and fraud checks.

How can you keep your Interac costs down?

Most of it comes down to how your processor prices debit, and whether your terminal handles every kind of debit payment.

1. Get Interac priced as a flat amount per transaction, in writing, next to your credit card rates.
2. Make sure your terminal takes chip and PIN as well as tap. Interac says contactless limits are set up to $250 per transaction, so larger sales need the PIN.
3. Don't discourage tapping to save interchange. For most merchants, a tap under $100 carries 3.5 cents against zero for chip and PIN, and a faster line is worth more than that.
4. Watch for monthly minimums and fees outside the per-transaction price.
5. If your tickets are large, consider a small discount for paying by debit.
6. Read your first statement after any change and confirm Interac shows as a flat amount per transaction.

Our POS terminals and mobile payments accept Interac, Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay and Google Pay, so one device takes every kind of debit your customers carry.

Common mistakes with Interac fees

• Paying a percentage on debit. Interac Debit is built as a flat-fee payment, so a percentage price is worth questioning.
• Confusing Interac Debit with Visa Debit or Debit Mastercard. They run on different networks with different prices and rules.
• Adding a debit fee at the till. Interac doesn't allow merchants to apply one directly, the cap is 25 cents through your acquirer, and Quebec bans card fees outright.
• Mixing up Interac Debit fees and e-Transfer fees. One is set by your processor, the other by your bank.
• Assuming debit always saves a lot. On small tickets the saving is a few cents a sale; on large ones it's much more.

The next step

Pull your last statement and find two numbers: what you paid per Interac transaction, and what you paid as a percentage on credit. If you can't find the first, or it's a percentage, send the statement to us for a free statement review and we'll break out your debit and credit costs line by line. The rules above apply to merchants across Canada, whether you sell in Saskatoon or St. John's, with Quebec's ban on card fees on top.