Our platform provides several powerful features to help you lower your transaction costs, increase your card approval rates, and reduce fraud. This guide gives you a high-level overview of these tools and links to detailed implementation guides for each.

---

What is Interchange Optimization?

Every card transaction includes an interchange fee—a cost paid by your bank (the acquirer) to the customer's bank (the issuer). These fees vary based on factors like card type (consumer vs. corporate), transaction method (in-person vs. online), and the quality of the data you provide.

Interchange optimization is the process of providing more detailed and verified transaction data to card issuers. This helps them validate that a transaction is legitimate, which in turn can lead to two key benefits for you:

• Lower Transaction Costs: Qualifying for better interchange categories reduces your fees.
• Higher Approval Rates: Richer data gives issuers more confidence to approve transactions.

---

How to Optimize Your Transactions

There are two primary strategies for optimizing interchange: enriching your transaction data and reducing your risk profile.

1. Provide Richer Data (Level 2 & Level 3)

   For some businesses, particularly those who sell B2B, passing additional data is highly beneficial. Corporate, business, and purchasing cards are eligible for significantly lower rates if the transaction includes enhanced details.

   1. Level 2 Data typically includes sales tax information.
   2. Level 3 Data is more detailed, including line-item information like product descriptions, quantity, and unit cost. This data helps issuers validate that a purchase made with a corporate card is a legitimate business expense.

2. Reduce Transaction Risk (Address Verification) Verifying a customer’s information is one of the biggest influences on interchange rates. A transaction that is verified as low-risk is often cheaper to process.

   1. Address Verification Service (AVS) checks the address and postcode provided by a customer against the information on file with their bank. Passing AVS data reduces your risk of fraud and chargebacks, which can translate into lower fees and avoid penalty charges from some card networks.

---

Visa Commercial Enhanced Data Program (CEDP)

Visa’s Commercial Enhanced Data Program (CEDP) is the updated interchange framework for eligible U.S. commercial and small business credit card transactions. CEDP replaces the legacy Level 2 and Level 3 commercial card structure with a Product 3 qualification model.

CEDP is not a separate product merchants opt into. It applies automatically when merchants on IC+ pricing submit enhanced transaction data for eligible Visa commercial card payments. To qualify for the best available rates, merchants must submit complete, accurate, invoice-quality transaction data within Visa's submission window.

Participation fee

Visa assesses a CEDP participation fee of 5 bps (0.05%) on eligible CEDP transactions submitted with enhanced Level 2 or Level 3 data. This fee is separate from the interchange rate and applies regardless of verified status, including transactions that are later evaluated for Product 3 qualification.

Invoice-quality data requirement

CEDP requires merchants to submit invoice-quality data. Transaction details must accurately represent the goods or services purchased and reconcile to the transaction amount.

Invoice-quality data should include:

• Specific product or service descriptions
• Quantity
• Unit cost
• Tax amount, when applicable
• Shipping amount, when applicable
• Line-item details that match the final transaction total

Merchants should avoid generic or placeholder values such as Product, Service, Item, Misc, or repeated static descriptions that do not describe the actual purchase. Visa rejects these values under CEDP, and transactions submitted with them will not qualify for Product 3 rates.

Merchants must also submit invoice-quality Level II/III data within 96 hours of authorization. Submissions received after this window do not qualify for CEDP rates.

For field-level requirements, the anti-patterns list, and the card-brand matrix, see Level II/III Data.

Verified vs. non-verified status

Visa evaluates merchants under CEDP based on the quality and consistency of enhanced data submitted for eligible commercial card transactions.

Merchants start as non-verified and may become verified after Visa confirms that submitted data meets CEDP quality requirements. Verified status can also be lost if data quality falls below the required threshold.

What this means for your integration

Use the table below to identify the action that applies based on how transactions are submitted today.

---

Features at a Glance

Below are the primary tools available on our platform to help you optimize costs and security.