American Express, Discover, Diner's Club and JCB are all considered to be "non-bankcard" cards since they are operated by private businesses and not the association of banks that comprise Visa & MasterCard.

There is a per transaction cost that is incurred by merchants to "piggyback" the transaction requests through the processing networks to these individual companies, and this fee is typically called a T&E fee or a Non-Bankcard Per Item/Transaction fee.

The bottom line is that you will pay this per transaction cost every time you process a sale for one of the aforementioned card types. You will not pay any VISA/MC discount rate but rather just the per transaction cost for this line item along with the discount rate charged by the 3rd party company.

What are these discount rate fees? For Discover, your rate is set based upon your average ticket size and business category... you can expect a rate of 2-3%... for Amex you are usually given the option of a $5/month flat rate plan that covers up to $5,000 in annual Amex transactions or a higher discount rate of over 4%.

It is important to know that these fees are NOT subject to mark up or discounting by individual banks or merchant processors. They are "set in stone" by these individual private card organizations.

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