Banks Pressuring Visa to Cut Back on Apple Pay Fees

A number of banks are currently pressuring Visa to make changes to the way it processes some payments made via Apple Pay, moves that would reduce the fees the banks pay to Apple for certain transactions, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Apple Pay Feature
At the heart of the issue are automatic recurring payments like memberships and streaming services. Visa is aiming to change the way it issues tokens for ‌Apple Pay‌ cards such that Apple would only receive a transaction fee on an initial subscription payment and not on subsequent transactions.

When Apple introduced Apple Pay in 2014, the iPhone had already clobbered music players, cameras and GPS systems. Banks and card networks worried it also would displace card payments.

Banks agreed to pay Apple 0.15% of each purchase made by their credit cardholders. (They pay a separate fee on debit-card transactions.) Those fees account for most of the revenue that Apple makes from its digital wallet, according to people familiar with the matter.

Aside from the fee arrangement, Apple garnered several other concessions from credit card issuers as it rolled out ‌Apple Pay‌, and in exchange, Apple agreed not to launch its own credit card network to go up against Visa and Mastercard.

With the launch of Apple Card in partnership with Goldman Sachs, Apple has become more of a direct competitor to other banks, and some bank executives have reportedly been angered by Apple's move and are seeking ways to reduce the payments they make to Apple.

Apple has unsurprisingly informed Visa that it objects to the proposed change that would reduce the fees it receives on recurring transactions, so it remains to be seen whether Visa will follow through on its plans, which are scheduled to go into effect next year.

Related Roundup: Apple Pay

Popular Stories

iOS 26 Battery Glass Feature

iOS 26.1 Beta Liquid Glass Battery Drain Test: Tinted vs Clear Mode

Friday October 24, 2025 2:30 pm PDT by
In the fourth iOS 26.1 beta, Apple added a "Tinted" option that reduces the translucency of Liquid Glass for those who prefer a more opaque look. I saw some comments wondering whether the setting might preserve battery life, so I thought I'd do some testing. Test Settings I did four separate tests using the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and I kept the parameters as similar as possible. Here are the...
iOS 26

iOS 26.1 Coming Soon: New Features for Your iPhone and Release Date

Monday October 27, 2025 7:55 am PDT by
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones, including a toggle for changing the appearance of the Liquid Glass design, "slide to stop" for alarms in the Clock app, and more. Below, we outline key details about iOS 26.1. Release Date Given that Apple has yet to seed an iOS 26.1 Release Candidate, which is typically the final beta version, the...
iOS 26 Maps Glass

Apple Reportedly Moving Ahead With Ads in Maps App

Sunday October 26, 2025 6:22 am PDT by
Apple Maps could feature integrated ads as soon as next year, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports. In his latest "Power On" newsletter, Gurman said that Apple's plan to bring more ads to iOS is moving "gaining traction," with the Maps app being next in line. The project will apparently give restaurants and other businesses the option to pay to have their details featured more prominently in...
iOS 26

iOS 26.1 Coming Soon With These 8 New Features for Your iPhone

Wednesday October 22, 2025 6:15 am PDT by
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones, including a toggle for changing the appearance of the Liquid Glass design, "slide to stop" for alarms in the Clock app, and more. iOS 26.1 is currently in beta testing. The update will likely be released in the first half of November, and it is compatible with the iPhone 11 series and newer, but some...
maxresdefault

Apple TV 4K Could Still Launch Before 2025 Ends: All the Rumored Features

Monday October 27, 2025 4:51 pm PDT by
Apple is designing an updated version of the Apple TV 4K, and rumors suggest that it could come out sometime in the next couple of months. We're not expecting a major overhaul with design changes, but even a simple chip upgrade will bring major improvements to Apple's set-top box. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. We've rounded up all the latest Apple TV rumors. ...
M6 MacBook Pro Feature 1

M6 MacBook Pro: Release Date, Pricing, and What to Expect

Monday October 27, 2025 9:15 am PDT by
Apple this month refreshed the 14-inch MacBook Pro base model with its new M5 chip, and higher-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips are expected to follow in early 2026. However, these machines will represent the final update to the current design, with Apple reportedly developing a completely new version of the MacBook Pro packed with next-generation hardware...
iPhone 17 Colors

iPhone 18 Rumored to Feature 50% More RAM

Saturday October 25, 2025 2:57 am PDT by
Apple's upcoming iPhone 18 could feature 50% more memory than its predecessor, according to Korea's The Bell. With its latest iPhone lineup, the iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max feature 12GB of memory. This is a significant increase of 4GB more their predecessors, largely driven by the demands of on-device artificial intelligence processing. The iPhone 17 is the only new...
swift for android

Developers Can Now Make Android Apps With Apple's Swift

Sunday October 26, 2025 4:23 am PDT by
The first preview release of the Swift SDK for Android was published this week, allowing developers to build Android apps in Swift with official tooling and making it easier to share code across iOS and Android. The SDK enables Android apps to be built in Swift using officially supported tooling rather than community workarounds. In June, it was announced that Apple's Swift programming...
Emergency SOS via Satellite iPhone YT

iPhone 18 Pro Rumored to Support Full 5G Satellite Internet

Friday October 24, 2025 7:18 am PDT by
At least some new iPhone models launching next year may support full 5G satellite internet, according to a report this week from The Information. "Apple plans to add support in upcoming iPhones as early as next year for 5G networks that aren't tethered to Earth's surface, which includes satellites," the report said. "That would give the iPhone full internet access over satellite," it added. ...

Top Rated Comments

brianjlambert Avatar
53 months ago
Yet, the banks get the benefit of a secure transaction that’s verified biometrically. They’d rather take a loss on used stolen cards than give anyone else a fraction of a percent more to have a secure payment.
Score: 26 Votes (Like | Disagree)
dguisinger Avatar
53 months ago
I'm honestly tired of everyone taking cuts on the flowing of money - someone always has to pay for it in the end.

If only we all had cash in the bank and could ACH it for FREE. But no, as soon as its a credit card, someone has to pay for the transactions. Visa and MasterCard don't do anything other than pass transaction numbers around, yet make 3%. Apple's 0.15% seems more reasonable, though they too are only passing numbers back and forth to facilitate a transaction they had nothing to do with.
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)
mookc1 Avatar
53 months ago
Visa should thank Apple for further securing transactions.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
mannyvel Avatar
53 months ago
The benefit of Apple Pay is the risk of fraud is substantially less. The same can be said with the Apple Card. That alone is worth the .15%.

It's interesting that Visa is saying they're getting squeezed by other card issuers. That sounds like a money grab by Visa, since other issuers will also have the same change applied to them.

And in any case the change makes no sense. A transaction is a transaction. Whether it's a subscription or not makes no difference.

Edit: one other interesting thing is that the article talks about banks. Really, they should be called "card issuers", who are not necessarily banks. Or is the article saying that bank-based issuers pay the fees and the non-bank ones do not?
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
TheYayAreaLiving ?️ Avatar
53 months ago
The banks have enough money. Come on now. They make enough profit on interests alone.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
R3k Avatar
53 months ago
Screw the banks, they've had their chance to move things forward, innovate, compete and they just tried to keep things stuck.

It took Apple and a pandemic for wireless payments to become a common thing in the city I live.

Also, I just spent 9 months working in Europe. Before I would need to pay everything in cash, losing $10 for the withdrawal otherwise I would have to pay with credit card which brought a $5+ fee for every transaction.

With Apple Pay- 0 fees, and the waiter just comes to the table with a handheld scanner, I point my phone, all done, 2% cash back.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)