MasterCard Europe has today announced SEPA fall-back interchange rates for Maestro® point-of-sale (POS) transactions intended to be effective from 1 January 2008. The Maestro SEPA fall-back rates per transaction type are as follows:
Maestro, Chip & PIN, EUR 0.05 + 0.20%
Secure e&m-commerce, EUR 0.05 + 0.25%
Baseline transaction,EUR 0.05 + 0.30%
Large Merchants, EUR 0.03 + 0.12%
Mastercard states that for cross-border Maestro POS transactions, the fall-back interchange rates are significantly reduced versus current intra-EEA cross-border rates. For a typical transaction of 50 euros, the new Maestro SEPA interchange rates will be between 9 and 20 euro cents – as compared with the current Maestro intra-EEA interchange rates of 25 to 59 euro cents.
It will be interesting to see the response of Commission and ECB to this publication. Undoubtedly they won't be satisfied (a satisfied regulator/overseer being one if the inherent impossibilities of life)....
