That 'dues and assessments' line? Here's what it actually is.

A network-level fee, not a processor markup

Dues and assessments are fees charged directly by the card networks (Visa and Mastercard each have their own) as a small percentage of your total card volume — separate from interchange and separate from your processor's markup. It's genuinely a pass-through cost: Visa and Mastercard charge it to processors, and processors pass it to merchants, typically as a fraction of a percent.

Because it's small — often well under 0.15% of volume — it's an easy line to overlook on a statement, and also an easy line for a processor to quietly mark up, since most merchants never check whether the 'assessment fee' they're being charged matches what the network actually charges.

How to tell if yours is fair

The network-published assessment rates are public information, so a dues and assessments line that's meaningfully higher than the published network rate is a markup in disguise — the same tactic as an inflated 'PCI fee' or 'batch fee.' It's rarely a large dollar amount on its own, but on a statement full of similarly small padded line items, they add up.

If you're reviewing a statement and see this line, it's worth asking your processor directly what portion is the actual network assessment versus their own markup — a transparent processor should be able to answer that without hesitation.

Common questions