What does a card program
actually earn — and cost?
Every crypto firm wants a card; few model the economics beneath it. Drag the inputs to see indicative interchange revenue, scheme + sponsor + processing cost, and the net unit economics — split into revenue, cost, and what's actually left. Directional bands only.
Total spend processed across the program each month. Most cost and revenue scale linearly with this.
Drives transaction count (volume ÷ avg tx). Lower tickets mean more per-transaction processing cost against the same volume — ~111,111 tx/month here.
Dataset version 2026-06-02. No data is sent or stored. Computation runs locally. Bands are indicative, not a quote.
Consumer debit at 20bps of volume.
Network assessment and service fees, ~10–15bps of volume. Paid to the card scheme regardless of model.
~5–10bps of volume plus €0.03–0.05 per transaction across ~111,111 monthly transactions.
~15–35bps of volume plus a small per-transaction charge. The price of issuing under a sponsor's licence instead of holding your own.
Net margin before card manufacturing, fraud / chargeback losses, rewards funding, and finconduit fees. Equivalent to -57.78–-18.89bps of volume.
- Consumer interchange is hard-capped by the EU Interchange Fee Regulation — 0.20% on debit/prepaid, 0.30% on credit. You cannot earn above the cap on EEA consumer flow; the revenue ceiling is fixed by statute, not negotiation.
- Issuing cards requires an EMI or bank licence, or access via a licensed BIN sponsor. The sponsored route trades a per-volume fee for speed-to-market; principal membership trades fixed cost and a licence for margin at scale.
- Break-even is sensitive to average transaction value: at €45/tx your program processes ~111,111 transactions/month, and the fixed per-transaction processing component erodes net margin fastest on low-ticket spend. Smaller average tickets mean more per-tx cost against the same volume.
- Bands are indicative and exclude card manufacturing, fraud and chargeback losses, rewards / cashback funding, KYC and onboarding cost, and finconduit fees. Real net economics depend on the negotiated scheme and sponsor schedule.
For orientation only — not financial, legal, regulatory, or investment advice. Outputs are directional and based on generalised inputs. Decisions should be taken only after consultation with a qualified adviser on your specific facts — book the full assessment before acting on anything you read here.
Numbers shown exclude finconduit fees and any third-party costs (legal, audit, regulator-mandated experts, banking-relationship fees, document-translation, ongoing supervisory levies, or local agent / service-provider charges). Real-world authorisation budgets typically exceed the headline regulator-side numbers by a meaningful multiple.