What is interchange pass-through for Elavon merchants in 2026?

Interchange pass-through pricing—often called interchange-plus—is a billing model where Elavon passes exact wholesale card network rates directly to you, adding a separate markup. Under this structure, you pay the exact card brand fees established by Visa and Mastercard at cost. The processor does not artificially inflate these base rates.

We analyze payment processing statements to evaluate real merchant costs, and pass-through stands out as the most honest pricing model in the industry. It isolates card network wholesale fees from processor profit. You can audit your statements and immediately achieve parity between the rates the networks publish and the fees you actually pay.

You can spot true interchange pass-through pricing on an Elavon billing statement by looking for distinct line items. These lines separate wholesale card network fees from Elavon's processing markup. Statement summaries typically categorize interchange costs by card type and dedicate a clear section for processor transaction fees and basis-point markups.

Across 5 real Elavon merchant statements analyzed by Parity, merchants achieved an average blended effective rate of just 1.40%. This empirical data, which holds up when comparing Elavon against Chase for high volume, demonstrates how true pass-through transparently separates base wholesale costs from processor markups to yield competitive real-world costs.

Elavon passes through specific wholesale US network fees directly to you before applying its own markup. This includes regulated debit and consumer credit interchange tiers. Because Elavon passes these baseline costs through without alteration, you pay the exact card network cost for every card type you swipe or key-enter.

For regulated debit cards, Visa Debit CPS Regulated and Mastercard Debit Regulated both carry a wholesale rate of 0.05% + $0.22. Standard credit card transactions follow exact network schedules. Visa Credit CPS Retail costs 1.51% + $0.10, while Mastercard Consumer Credit Merit III Core carries a wholesale rate of 1.65% + $0.10.

Interchange pass-through pricing bills exact wholesale network costs alongside a separate fee. Tiered pricing bundles transactions into opaque qualified, mid-qualified, and non-qualified tiers laden with hidden markups. This distinction dictates whether you receive the direct savings of lower wholesale rates or pay inflated rates designed around processor categorizations. You can see this contrast sharply when evaluating interchange-plus options against competitors like Chase.

Pass-through guarantees you capture the direct benefit of low-cost regulated debit rates, such as 0.05% + $0.22. Traditional tiered pricing groups these cheap transactions into broader qualified or mid-qualified buckets. This allows the processor to absorb the margin between the wholesale debit cap and their own inflated percentage fee.