Business credit cards are the dearest card at your counter. The cap lands on 22 April 2027, and the regulator already expects a fifth of the saving to go missing

If a customer pays you on a business credit card, that payment costs you roughly double what a personal credit card does. From 22 April 2027 that changes: the Commerce Commission has capped the interchange on New Zealand-issued business cards at 0.70% in person and 1.10% online, against a weighted average of about 1.40% today. The decision came out this morning. Two things in it matter more than the headline. The caps are 0.20 points softer than the June draft, and the Commission itself now assumes only $40 million of the $50 million it is taking out of the system will reach the businesses paying it. The other $10 million is the part this page is about, because whether your share of it arrives depends on a phone call, not a regulation.

The short answer

A commercial credit card is a Mastercard or Visa issued to a business for business spending: the company card in your plumber's wallet, the corporate card the office manager uses for the Friday catering order, the business Visa a visiting sales rep pays for their gym day pass with. Until now the interchange on those cards, the slice of your merchant fee that goes to the card issuer, was unregulated. The Commission's own table puts current domestic rates anywhere from 0.20% to 2.20%, with the weighted average sitting around 1.40%. Personal credit cards have been capped at 0.30% in person since 1 December 2025.

From 22 April 2027 the caps are:

• New Zealand-issued business card, in person: 0.70%. The June draft said 0.50%.
• New Zealand-issued business card, online: 1.10%. The draft said 0.90%.
• Overseas-issued business card, in person: 0.70%. Unchanged from the draft, and now the same as an overseas personal credit card.
• Overseas-issued business card, online: 1.50%. Unchanged from the draft.

The Commission expects the weighted average on domestic business cards to land at about 0.82% once the caps bite, down from 1.39%, and on overseas business cards at about 1.37%, down from 1.99%. Australia, the comparison it leaned on when it softened the domestic caps, caps the same cards at 0.80%.

Why this is the card that costs you most

The Commission's monitoring data for the year to November 2025 says business credit cards were 8% of the value of Mastercard and Visa transactions in New Zealand but 19% of the interchange merchants paid. In money, that is about $125 million a year of interchange inside roughly $170 million of merchant service fees on these cards. Over the same year the interchange paid on domestic business cards grew 9% while the value of those transactions grew 6%, so the cost per dollar was still rising.

The reason is simple and the Commission says it plainly: business cards carry rewards, points and expense tools, and those benefits are paid for by the merchant through interchange, then passed on to every customer through prices. Its merchant survey found 71% of respondents saw no extra benefit from accepting a business card over a personal one, and 78% would take lower fees even if, as cardholders, their own perks shrank.

The fifth that goes missing

Here is the paragraph the write-ups skipped. The Commission estimates the caps cut interchange by $50 million a year, but it only expects merchant service fees to fall by $40 million. It says the gap "reflects imperfect cost pass-through from acquirers to merchants arising from acquiring market features such as differences in merchant pricing plans". In July 2025 it assumed 90% of an interchange cut would reach merchants. It has now dropped that assumption, in its own words, to something "more conservative", because its newer monitoring data told it to.

In plain terms: your bank or payment provider is charged less from 22 April. Whether it charges you less depends on how your fees are priced.

• Interchange plus, sometimes called unblended. Interchange is a separate line on your statement, so when the cap falls your bill falls with it, automatically.
• Blended, one flat rate on everything. Your provider keeps the difference until you renegotiate. The Commission notes "the increased use of blended pricing" as one reason it is less sure the saving will arrive, and says it will watch "differences in outcomes across merchant size and sector".

Small businesses are the ones on blended plans, and the Commission's paper says as much: small merchants "are likely to have limited ability to negotiate merchant service fees". So the $10 million the regulator has already written off is, mostly, small-business money.

There is a date that helps you. Mastercard and Visa have to confirm the new rates with the banks and payment providers within two months of the decision, so by 22 December 2026 your provider knows exactly what business cards will cost it from April. That makes January the month to ask, in writing, what your commercial card rate will be from 22 April, and whether your plan passes interchange changes through or needs a new agreement to do so.

What it is worth on your counter

The figures below are illustrations built on the Commission's own averages. Swap in your numbers from your merchant statements.

The cafe with a standing office account. A nearby firm puts its Friday catering on the company Visa, about $2,000 a month, $24,000 a year. The Commission's estimated weighted average merchant service fee on a domestic business card is 1.83%, so that account costs about $440 a year to collect. It also estimates the non-interchange part of that fee at 0.4% to 0.5%. Put those two numbers together: if interchange falls from about 1.40% to about 0.82% and everything else stays put, the fee on that account lands nearer 1.25%, about $300 a year. The cap is worth roughly $140 on this one customer. A coffee a week. The same account paid by bank transfer on a seven-day invoice costs you nothing, and that was true before today and will be true after April.

The business near the top of the range. The Commission's table runs to 2.20% on domestic business cards and says merchants on negotiated "strategic" or industry rates sit at the bottom of it. If you have never negotiated, assume you are not at the bottom. On $100,000 a year of business card takings, every 0.10 points is $100, so a provider paying 2.20% interchange today and 0.70% in April has $1,500 a year of lower cost on your account. Whether it reaches you is the previous section.

The tourist-town operator. Overseas business cards average about 2% interchange today and will be capped at 0.70% in person. On $50,000 of overseas business card sales that is about $650 a year. If you run a clinic, a gym or a cafe anywhere visitors and business travellers pay, this is the line to look at first, because it is the biggest single drop in the table.

None of these numbers rebuilds a margin on their own. They are the kind of cost that drops straight through to net margin in the month it changes, with no customer told anything and no staff member asked for anything. That is rarer than it sounds.

The two-year ratchet, in plain words

The decision includes something the Commission calls a limiting mechanism. For New Zealand-issued business cards, the interchange you pay from 22 April is the lower of the new cap and the rate that applied to that category on 1 December 2025, and that rule runs until 21 April 2029. The point is to stop a rate that is already under 0.70% being quietly raised to meet it. A pizza place whose business card interchange was already at 0.50% last December stays at 0.50%. The cap is a ceiling, not a target, for two years.

Two things follow. First, if you are already on a low negotiated rate the headline does little for you, which is why the Commission's expected average is 0.82% rather than 0.70%. Second, after April 2029 the ceiling is all that is left, and the Commission has said only that it will "monitor" repricing. Treat 2029 as a date to put in the diary, not a problem for later.

What did not change today

• American Express is still outside all of this. Amex sets its own merchant fee and has no interchange to cap. The Commission says it will watch whether spend shifts there, and nothing more.
• The in-store surcharge ban has not moved. The Retail Payment System (Ban on Merchant Surcharges) Amendment Bill was reported back by the select committee on 12 November 2025 and, as at 22 October 2026, Parliament's record still shows no date for a second reading. If you surcharge, you can keep doing so, but the rule has not changed either: a surcharge should be no more than your cost of accepting that payment. From April your cost on business cards falls, and a sign set on today's numbers will be over-recovering.
• Personal and debit card caps are as they were. Domestic personal credit 0.30% in person and 0.70% online, contactless debit 0.20%, inserted debit 0.00%. If you have not checked whether those cuts reached you, our earlier page on merchant service fees shows the ten-minute statement check.

The buyer's question this answers

When you sell, a buyer's accountant asks what payments cost you as a percentage of sales, and then asks whether the agreement moves with the market or is whatever you signed in 2021. Twelve months of statements showing commercial cards at a post-cap rate on an interchange-plus plan is a small, verifiable, recurring saving that sits inside the profit figure the price is built on. A blended plan that never moved after three regulated cuts is a cost a buyer will fix in their first month and will not pay you for. The caps run to at least April 2029, which is inside the horizon of most sales being planned now, so the agreement you hold on 22 April is the one that gets read.