Banks collect swipe fees, not Visa or Mastercard

Interchange fees on U.S. credit card transactions flow mostly to issuing banks like Chase, Citi, Capital One, and Bank of America, not to Visa or Mastercard. The networks keep roughly 0.13 to 0.15 percent of the sale. Countries like Brazil with Pix and India with UPI have near-zero fee systems that bypass card networks entirely.