The end merchant pays 1-3%, then there are a whole bunch of middle-people that take a cut. The merchant acquirer (eg Stripe), the merchant bank, the issuer ban

The end merchant pays 1-3%, then there are a whole bunch of middle-people that take a cut. The merchant acquirer (eg Stripe), the merchant bank, the issuer bank, the tokenization service (if using Apple/Google/Samsung Pay), there's a long list of people taking part of that fee. Visa as the network operator takes some of that cut as well, depending on the type of transaction, the type of card (debit vs credit vs "premium" credit). It's much more complicated than Visa getting all of the merchant fee.