Mastercard vs Visa for New Issuers: Pick the Best Scheme

Card schemes are the organisations that handle all card transactions between the card issuer, the card acquirer, and the merchant receiving the payment. For new card issuers, the choice between the Mastercard and the Visa card scheme involves weighing up several factors and deciding which will work best for their operations.

The two card schemes are similar in their operations but differ significantly in their fees, product offerings, and approval processes.

Mastercard vs Visa market reach and acceptance for new issuers

Visa has the largest market share for card transactions globally. Mastercard is the second-largest. However, the two companies are more competitive in other regions of the world. For instance, Mastercard has a strong foothold in parts of Europe and several emerging markets.

The market share that a new card company chooses will determine the popularity of the card that will be issued to customers. A card brand with a 60% market share in a specific country will be more popular than the other brand with only a 30% presence in that country.

Acceptance of a card brand by merchants and ATMs is another essential feature of the card scheme that must be considered. In most cases, both Mastercard and Visa are accepted by all merchants and ATMs. However, there are instances where some of these merchants or ATMs will not take Mastercard or Visa cards. Examples of such merchants include:

The acceptance of the brand by these merchants should be determined before choosing a brand to issue to customers.

Customers' preference for the brand of the card to be issued is another factor to consider when choosing between the two card brands. Mastercard is the preferred brand in some parts of the world, while others will prefer Visa. The brand of the card that the customers use and the brands of the cards that the country's competitors use will significantly impact the number of customers who will use the new card that will be issued.

Visa vs Mastercard approval process for new issuers

New issuers can join a Mastercard or Visa account through two approval processes. These approval processes can be through principal membership with a brand or through BIN sponsorship by another organisation that is already a member of the organisation.

Principal membership path

Principal membership for new issuers involves acquiring a financial license that is recognised by the card brand and the country of operation. The company must have the required capital to operate with the brand and meet the regulatory requirements of the country. The company should also be operation-ready to pass the certification processes required by the card brand.

The approval process for this application can take between six months and over a year to complete. The starting budget for this approval process is around one million euros.

BIN sponsorship as a faster alternative

The other approval process is through BIN sponsorship. In this process, new issuers can issue cards under the principal membership of another organisation. This process can significantly shorten the approval time for a new company to join the Mastercard or Visa brand. It also eliminates most of the costs associated with principal membership.

The downside of BIN sponsorship is that new fintech companies must operate under the main compliance processes of the sponsoring organisation. However, there is the option to include an agreement in the sponsorship that allows the company to operate its own BINs or to allow for the portability of the BIN numbers between the two organisations. This will save the company the effort and cost of having to reissue all their cards if they ever want to operate on their own BINs.

How DECTA's BIN sponsorship works for new issuers

DECTA offers BIN sponsorship and white-label card issuing as one connected service, so new issuers do not have to stitch together a sponsor and a separate processor. Cards are issued under DECTA's Mastercard BIN range, and the same platform handles authorisation, clearing, settlement, fraud management, and the full card lifecycle.

The card issuing API covers the following through a single integration:

The setup covers debit, prepaid, business expense, payroll, travel, and virtual cards, with options for contactless EMV plastic, biometric cards, wearables, sustainable materials, and metal cards. Fraud and risk management is rule-based and tuned per client rather than off-the-shelf.

The standard onboarding flow walks from initial scoping and compliance review through Mastercard connection, fraud rule definition, card design, and integration to go-live, which puts a workable target of around two months on simpler launches.

DECTA itself is FCA-licensed in the UK as an EMI, a Visa Principal Member, PCI DSS Level 1 certified, and a certified third-party technical processor in the EU and APAC, which sets the regulatory backdrop the sponsorship operates under.

What interchange fees do Visa and Mastercard charge new issuers?

Interchange is the fee that an acquiring bank pays to the card issuer for each transaction that passes through their system. This is the primary source of revenue for most card programs. Both Mastercard and Visa publish detailed tables of the interchange fees that they charge according to:

Within most categories and regions of the world, the interchange fees set by Mastercard and Visa are almost identical. There are, however, some exceptions to this rule, mainly in unregulated markets and for prepaid cards.

The European Union and the United Kingdom have a regulation on the interchange fees they can charge, known as Regulation 2015/751. This regulation states that the interchange fees for consumer debit cards should be 0.2% of the transaction value, while interchange fees for consumer credit cards should be 0.3% of the transaction value.

Both Mastercard and Visa charge these fees within the EU and the United Kingdom, meaning that there is an effectively zero difference between the two interchange networks within these regulated markets. Outside these markets, however, and for commercial and prepaid cards, there are significant differences between the interchange fees of the two networks. For instance, the interchange fees for commercial cards can differ by several basis points between Mastercard and Visa.

The tables of interchange fees published by Mastercard and Visa are the fees that the cards can earn from new issuers. The actual interchange fees earned by the issuer depend on a variety of other factors, including:

Fintech support programs and launch incentives

Mastercard and Visa have established support programs for new issuers that wish to launch their own card programs. The eligibility requirements of these programs differ between the networks (as well as within Mastercard), which means that a fintech company's eligibility for these programs can have a major impact on its decision to select either Mastercard or Visa as its issuing network.

Visa Fast Track

Visa's Fast Track program is established for fintech companies that would like to establish a credit or debit card issuing program. Visa Fast Track pairs the fintech company with various enablement partners of the network and adjusts the commercial terms of the fintech's access to various Visa services.

Companies that wish to participate in this program must meet the following requirements:

The specific eligibility criteria and the application process are documented on the Visa Fintech Fast Track website. The decision of which program the fintech will participate in will have a major impact on the company's selection of Visa or Mastercard as its issuing organisation.

Mastercard Engage and Start Path

Mastercard has two fintech programs: Engage and Start Path. Engage is a directory of enablement partners for the Mastercard network. Start Path is a program that forms cohorts of fintech companies that participate in a selection of six tracks on the Mastercard network. These tracks include:

Engage is a program similar to Visa Fast Track, while Start Path targets more established companies with a live product. Start Path cohorts are invitation-led and include companies that have raised seed or Series A funding and have a product generating revenue. The selection criteria for these programs help a fintech determine which network to establish its new card program with.

Card products and capabilities that each scheme offers new issuers

At a high level, both Mastercard and Visa offer similar card types for new issuers, including consumer debit and credit cards, prepaid cards, and business and corporate cards. Each company offers new issuers more specific premium products within its network, such as Visa Infinite and Mastercard World Elite, each with its own eligibility requirements and fees.

Digital and mobile payment capabilities are essentially the same between the card schemes. Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, and click-to-pay are supported by both networks through their tokenization and mobile payment services. However, differences between the networks tend to appear at the processor level, in terms of how tokenization stacks are implemented and how quickly new wallet integrations land in production, and in the certifications held by the processors. Scheme parity matters less than processor capability when evaluating digital-first programs.

Value-added services have become an area of competition between the networks. Mastercard and Visa offer a range of add-on services such as expense management, rewards programs, fraud and dispute services, data analytics, and SME-specific features. These services are not offered equally across networks or regions, and their value varies by region. This is a key area where commercial teams can negotiate.

How to pick between Mastercard vs Visa as a new issuer

Mastercard and Visa will have different features, benefits, fees, and capabilities for each type of customer, so the selection between the networks depends largely on the characteristics of the customers and the capabilities of the processor managing transactions.

Match the scheme to your target market and customer segment

Start with geography. Pull market share and acceptance data for every country in your launch plan, weighted by projected customer volume in each. A scheme with 60% local share is a stronger default than one with 40%, all else equal. Cardholder preference research, where available, reinforces or contradicts what the share numbers suggest and is worth checking against any consumer testing you have done.

Layer the product fit on top of the geographic picture. SME and corporate-heavy programs often find more flexibility in one scheme than the other, with the answer depending on the region. Consumer programs typically see similar economics within regulated markets such as the EU and UK. Prepaid programs, particularly cross-border ones, can show meaningful interchange and program rule differences between schemes. Match the centre of gravity of your portfolio to the scheme that supports it best both operationally and commercially.

Weigh the total economics, not just interchange

Build a financial model that combines:

Run the model over a three-year horizon at low, expected, and stretch volume scenarios. The headline interchange rate rarely decides the answer. Joining fees, monthly minimums, FX assessments, scheme-specific mandate compliance work, and the size of the launch incentive package usually dominate first-year P&L for a new issuer.

Use a scheme competition to negotiate better commercial terms

Approach Mastercard vs Visa in parallel rather than sequentially. Share the same business plan with both teams, request commercial proposals on the same timeline, and let each side know they are competing for the program. Markets where the two schemes hold similar shares are where competition delivers the largest discounts, because each side has a real incentive to win. The difference between a negotiated and a list-price scheme deal can run into hundreds of thousands of euros over the first three years of operation.

Bundle the negotiation. Scheme commercials, fintech program incentives (Mastercard vs Visa fast-track tracks), and BIN sponsor pricing are interconnected, and treating them as one package surfaces trade-offs that stay invisible if negotiated sequentially. A BIN sponsor's offer often shifts depending on which scheme you commit to, and scheme incentives can be conditional on volumes that depend on the sponsor's onboarding speed. Pulling these threads together gives the cleanest view of total launch cost and lets you trade across the three negotiations.

Validate the choice against your processor and BIN sponsor

Before signing the scheme agreement, confirm that:

Some processors hold stronger certifications or feature parity on one scheme than the other, and a mismatch here can stall a launch by months. Scheme selection should follow processor selection rather than precede it, because committing to a scheme without confirmed processor support is the most common reason fintech card programs miss their go-live date.