How do Visa and Mastercard make money?

What's that got to do with MasterCard? Everything. It's MasterCard's whole reason for existence and the way that this global corporation makes its money. read more

Visa and Mastercard typically make 0.11% per transaction when a card is swiped. The rest goes to the acquirer bank (merchant's bank) and issuer (shopper's bank) as mentioned in the answers below. More % goes to the shopper's bank since they'll lose money if the shopper defaults on their credit card payment. read more

In 2010, MasterCard charged a currency conversion and cross-border fee off 1% of the transaction amount. The currency conversion fee was 0.2% of the transaction amount and the cross border fee was 0.8% of the transactions amount. MasterCard generated about $2.7 billion revenues from international fees in 2010. read more

MasterCard (and Visa) have established a number of interchange fee categories based on factors such as the type of account (e.g. consumer or commercial), the type of card (e.g. standard or premium), the type of merchant (e.g. government, charity or service station) and the type of transaction (e.g. chip, non-chip or contactless). read more