A recent article on Digital Transactions reports MasterCard will soon be introducing new “digital enablement” fees for its issuers and acquirers. The article cites several MasterCard customer bulletins published in July and August.
The fees for issuers of MasterCard- and Maestro/Cirrus-branded cards take effect Sept. 1. They include a “Digital Enablement Service Lifecycle Management” fee of 10 cents per PAN, billed monthly. MasterCard also will charge a 50-cent “digitization” fee each time a mobile device is provisioned with a token, and 2.5 cents for calls to its “alternative network application programming interface.” MasterCard announced those fees in an Aug. 6 bulletin that it said was a clarification of fees published in an Aug. 1 pricing bulletin, according to an article on Digital Transactions.
The new acquirer-side “Digital Enablement” fee takes effect next Jan. 5 and will be 1 basis point, or 0.01% of volume, billed weekly. The fee will apply to “select cardholder not present transactions” on consumer and commercial credit cards and signature-debit cards, a July 25 pricing bulletin says.
Both Visa and MasterCard have been working to accelerate the adoption of more secure, tokenized transactions, which can protect account data for in-store and e-commerce transactions. The tokenization standards currently in development will be particularly important for enabling transactions that are initiated via mobile devices. Visa’s pricing strategy for its tokenization services “Visa Digital Solutions” is still unknown, although it is reasonable for whoever ends up managing a tokenized environment to receive a fee for these services.
Overview by Michael Misasi, Senior Analyst, Credit Advisory Service
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