Visa's new 0.10% embedded payments fee on B2B virtual cards, effective October 23

What’s actually changing on October 23?

Visa is adding a new 0.10% acquirer fee on Visa Commercial Solutions virtual cards that Visa classifies as “embedded payments,” according to payments-cost consultancy Merchant Cost Consulting, which tracks network fee changes each cycle. It mostly affects businesses that pay suppliers or contractors using virtual card numbers generated automatically inside accounting, procurement, or AP software, rather than a physical or traditional commercial card.

If you don’t pay vendors with virtual cards, this one probably doesn’t touch you. If you do, or if your business accepts them from customers who pay that way, it’s worth five minutes to understand where the fee lands.

What’s an “embedded payment” virtual card, in plain terms?

A lot of modern AP and procurement software (think Bill.com-style tools, ERP add-ons, or a bank’s own payables platform) can generate a one-time-use Visa virtual card number automatically when a bill comes due, instead of cutting a check or sending a wire. The business’s software talks directly to Visa’s network to issue and spend that card, with no separate card application involved. Visa calls this an “embedded” payment because the card is generated and spent entirely inside another company’s software, not a standalone Visa product a person applies for.

These have grown fast because they skip the paperwork of a traditional commercial card while still giving the payer card-level controls, like a one-time spending limit tied to a specific invoice.

Who actually pays the 0.10% fee?

Acquirer fees are charged to the acquiring bank or processor that handles the transaction on the merchant side, which almost always passes the cost through to whichever business is receiving the payment. In practice:

• If you’re a contractor, supplier, or service business that gets paid by a customer’s embedded virtual card, your processor may pass this fee along, likely as a new or adjusted line item on your statement.
• If you’re the one issuing payments to vendors through your own AP software, the fee is usually baked into what your banking or AP platform charges you, not itemized to you directly as “0.10%.”
• If your business doesn’t touch B2B virtual cards at all, in either direction, there’s nothing to change.

0.10% sounds small, and on a single invoice it is. A $10,000 supplier payment carries a $10 fee. For a business processing a high volume of B2B virtual card receivables, say $200,000 a month, that’s $200 a month that wasn’t there before, with no change in how the business operates.

How to check if this affects you

• Do you accept payment from customers via virtual card numbers issued through their AP software? Watch your next statement for a new line item or a shift in your effective rate on those transactions.
• Do you pay vendors using a virtual card feature inside your accounting or banking software? Ask that platform directly whether this fee is passed to you, and how.
• Do you only take in-person swipe, tap, or chip payments? This change doesn’t apply to you.

The fastest way to tell is the same one that applies to every network fee change: pull your statement from before and after October 23, and compare your effective rate (total fees divided by total volume) on any B2B or virtual card category specifically, rather than the account as a whole. A small, isolated bump in that one category and nowhere else is the signature of a network fee like this one, as opposed to a markup change from your processor.

What to do about it

There’s no way to opt out of a Visa network fee, the same way there’s no way to opt out of interchange. What you can do is make sure it’s not getting layered with an extra markup on top by your processor or AP platform, which does happen when a new network fee rolls out and everyone in the chain takes a small cut while explaining it away as “Visa’s fee.” If a line item shows up that’s meaningfully larger than 0.10% of the relevant volume, that’s worth a direct question to whoever is charging it.

If you want a second set of eyes on your statement to see whether this, or anything else from this cycle, actually hit your account, get in touch and we’ll go through it with you.

Sources: October 2026 Interchange and Network Updates, Merchant Cost Consulting