It's great to know that you work in the industry, but it's irrelevant; argumentum ad verecundiam is a logical fallacy and only serves to demean your argument.

It's great to know that you work in the industry, but it's irrelevant; argumentum ad verecundiam is a logical fallacy and only serves to demean your argument. To address your point, I understand interchange as being set and collected by the card network, and is non-negotiable. Anything off the top is left for the banks to keep for themselves, e.g. the plus in "interchange plus" pricing). Another example assume a hypothetical interchange of 1.5% and a merchant that has a merchant account that costs 3.5% + 30¢ (gateway) per transaction. In this case the card network takes 1.5%, the gateway 30¢, and the banks 2%. Is this not how it works? It would be nice if you could cite something (not trying to be an ass in case it reads that way :).