Nobody publishes a typical UK blended rate, because it depends on which cards your clients use. Headline rates for personal cards sit around 1.5% + 20p, but business cards fall outside the UK's interchange caps and are priced higher, so an MSP whose clients mostly pay on company cards can easily end up paying over 2.5% overall. Dividing last month's card fees by last month's card takings gives you your real figure.
In this article
The short version
- No typical UK blended rate is published, because your effective rate depends on how payments split across personal, business and overseas card bands.
- UK law caps personal card interchange at 0.2% for debit and 0.3% for credit, and business and commercial cards sit outside those caps.
- A hypothetical MSP taking £30,000 a month, mostly on company cards, pays a blended 2.61% at Stripe's prices, against 1.52% if every card were personal.
- On Adfin, an £1,100 monthly fee collected by direct debit costs £4.20, against £31.00 on a business card at Stripe's premium rate.
- Surcharging is banned on personal cards and allowed on business and commercial cards only up to what the payment costs you to accept, excluding overheads.
What a blended card rate is
Every card payment carries three costs: interchange, which goes to the cardholder's bank; scheme fees, which go to Visa or Mastercard; and your payment provider's margin. A blended rate wraps all three into one headline price, such as 1.5% + 20p, so you know the fee before the payment is made. Almost every small business pays this way: the Payment Systems Regulator found over 95% of merchants were on this kind of bundled pricing.
Most providers don't have a single blended rate, though. They have several bands, one for personal cards, a higher one for business cards and another for cards issued abroad, and your effective rate depends on how your payments split across them.
Why business cards push an MSP's rate up
UK law caps interchange on personal cards at 0.2% for debit and 0.3% for credit. Business, corporate and commercial cards are outside those caps, so the card schemes set higher interchange on them, and providers pass it on. Stripe, for example, charges 1.5% + 20p on standard UK cards and 2.8% + 20p on business cards.
A shop taking payments from the public mostly sees capped personal cards. An MSP invoicing other businesses sees the opposite: the finance team or the managing director pays your invoice on the company card, and every one of those payments falls into the expensive band.
A worked blended rate for an MSP
Take a hypothetical MSP taking £30,000 a month by card across 30 payments, at Stripe's published UK prices. A few sole-trader clients pay on personal debit cards, most pay on company cards, and two clients pay on cards issued in the EEA.
| Card type | Payments | Average | Rate | Fees |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK personal debit | 8 | £500 | 1.5% + 20p | £61.60 |
| UK business card | 20 | £1,100 | 2.8% + 20p | £620.00 |
| EEA card | 2 | £2,000 | 2.5% + 20p | £100.40 |
| Total | 30 | £782.00 |
£782.00 ÷ £30,000 = 2.61%. That's this MSP's blended rate, even though 2.61% appears nowhere on the price list. If the same £30,000 had all come in on UK personal cards, the fees would have been £456.00, or 1.52%. Business cards make up 73% of the volume here and 79% of the fees.
To work out yours, export a month of card payments from your provider, add up the fees and divide by the total taken.
How to bring your card costs down
Move regular billing to direct debit. Monthly managed services fees are predictable, so there's no reason for them to go through the most expensive payment method you accept. On Adfin, a direct debit costs 1% + 20p with the percentage capped at £4, so an £1,100 monthly fee costs £4.20 to collect, against £31.00 on a business card at Stripe's premium rate. Keep cards for project work, hardware and clients who insist, and offer pay by bank for one-off invoices, which carries the same £4 cap on the percentage.
Surcharge business card payments. You can't add a surcharge to a payment made on a personal card, whoever the client is. On a business or commercial card you can, as long as the surcharge doesn't exceed what that payment costs you to accept, and it can't include overheads like staff time or equipment. Adfin can add the card fee to business card payments and collect it, for individual clients or all of them, so the client who chooses to pay by company card covers the cost of doing so. Adfin's AI Customer Agents apply the surcharge within the rules you set, alongside chasing overdue invoices and retrying failed payments. Take advice on your own terms before you start.
Common questions
What is the interchange cap on UK cards? 0.2% of the payment on UK personal debit cards and 0.3% on UK personal credit cards. Business and commercial cards, and American Express, aren't covered.
Why are business cards more expensive to accept? They sit outside the interchange caps, so card schemes set higher interchange on them and providers charge a premium rate.
What's the difference between blended and IC++ pricing? Blended pricing bundles every cost into one headline rate. IC++ passes the actual interchange and scheme fees through at cost and adds the provider's fee on top.
How do I calculate my own blended card rate? Divide the card fees you paid in a month by the card payments you took in the same month.
Can I surcharge clients who pay by card? Only on business or commercial cards, and only up to your cost of accepting that payment. Surcharges on personal cards are banned.
Is direct debit cheaper than card for monthly retainers? Usually, yes. On Adfin's published pricing a direct debit of any size costs at most £4.20 before the high-value charge above £2,000, while card fees rise with the invoice.
Sources
- legislation.gov.uk - Regulation (EU) 2015/751 on interchange fees (accurate as of September 2026) https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eur/2015/751/article/3
- Payment Systems Regulator - Market review into the supply of card-acquiring services: final report (accurate as of September 2026) https://www.psr.org.uk/media/p1tlg0iw/psr-card-acquiring-market-review-final-report-november-2021.pdf
- Stripe - Pricing & fees (UK) (accurate as of September 2026) https://stripe.com/gb/pricing
- Stripe Support - What's the difference between standard and premium cards (accurate as of September 2026) https://support.stripe.com/questions/what-s-the-difference-between-standard-and-premium-cards
- Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy - The Consumer Rights (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012 guidance (accurate as of September 2026) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5b2d09bae5274a55bb5790cb/payment-surcharges-guidance-update.pdf
- Adfin - Pricing (accurate as of September 2026) https://www.adfin.com/pricing
