U.S. and Canada Cross-Border Payments: One Account or Two?

Every card sale involves two banks:

• The issuer: the bank that gave your customer the card. Its home country is the card's issuing country.
• The acquirer: the bank behind your merchant account, the one that takes the payment on your side. Its country is where your merchant account "lives".

When the two countries match, the sale is domestic. When they don't, Visa and Mastercard treat it as international, and different rules and fees apply. The card networks decide this from the card and the account. The price tag's currency isn't part of the test.

Card's issuing country ≠ your merchant account's country = cross-border sale, whatever currency you charge in.

This is the point most owners miss. A Toronto store that switches its checkout to USD for American shoppers still pays cross-border fees on every U.S. card. A U.S. store that shows prices in CAD for Canadians still pays them on every Canadian card. Changing the currency changes what your customer sees. It doesn't change what the networks charge you.

A cross-border sale costs more in two ways:

1. International interchange. Interchange is the fee paid to the card issuer on every sale. Foreign cards have their own, higher rates.
2. Cross-border network fees. Visa and Mastercard add their own fees on top when the issuer and acquirer are in different countries.

Here are the published numbers as of September 27, 2026, for a standard Visa consumer credit card (Visa's "Classic" tier; premium and business cards cost more).

Sources: Visa U.S. interchange rates; Visa Canada interchange rates; U.S. network fees as published in an acquirer's April 2026 pass-through schedule (Fiserv); the Canadian Mastercard change from Canadian processors' network fee notices.

For comparison, a Canadian Visa Classic credit card on a Canadian account pays 1.40% interchange online (1.25% in person), with no cross-border fees. The domestic Canadian rates and the small-business rates changing on October 24, 2026 are in our guide to credit card processing fees in Canada.

Worked example: one $100 online sale

A U.S. business sells a $100 order online to a customer in Vancouver who pays with a Visa Classic credit card. This example is illustrative: it uses the published rates above, counts only interchange and the named network fees, and leaves out each provider's own markup and the small network fees every sale pays.

The gap is 1.65 points, or $1.65 on every $100 of Canadian card sales. On $20,000 (USD) a month in Canadian card sales, that's about $330 (USD) a month, or nearly $4,000 a year, before any markup. The Canadian account's sale would be in CAD, but the percentages compare directly. Had the U.S. business charged in CAD on its U.S. account, the Visa assessment would be 1.40% instead of 1.00%, so the gap grows.

There's a second cost your customer sees. A Canadian card charged in USD usually carries the issuing bank's foreign-currency fee, typically 2.5% in Canada (Scotiabank's published fee is one example). It doesn't come out of your deposit, but customers notice it and some abandon the cart.

Fees aren't the only cost. Card issuers are more cautious with foreign merchants, so cross-border online sales are declined more often than domestic ones. A good customer whose card is declined may not try again.

• Address checks. AVS (address verification) compares the billing address the customer types with the one on file at the issuer. U.S. and Canadian issuers support it, but Canadian postal codes mix letters and numbers. Test your checkout and your AVS settings with a Canadian address before you rely on them to block orders.
• Fraud filters. Rules that flag "foreign" orders can block your own good customers from across the border. Review them once you start selling there. See fraud prevention tools and how card-not-present fraud works.

When each country's cards go to a merchant account in that country, the issuer sees a domestic merchant, so those sales avoid the extra caution foreign sales get.

START sets up merchants who need Canada only, the U.S. only, or both (the overview is on our Canadian merchant accounts page). Here's who each setup fits.

When one account is enough. If sales from the other country are small or occasional, the extra fees on those sales may cost less than running a second account. Price the gap with the example above: take your monthly card sales from the other country and multiply by the extra points you pay.

When two accounts pay off. Once the other country is a steady part of your sales, the savings on every sale, plus fewer declines, usually outweigh the work of a second account. Each account is applied for separately, and what each one needs (business registration, bank account, owner details) depends on the country and the bank. Tell us how your business is set up and we'll tell you what applies.

For each direction in more detail, see how Canadian businesses take payments from U.S. customers and our guide to selling to Canadian customers from the U.S.

Owners often search for a "multi-currency merchant account" in Canada, hoping one account can serve both countries at domestic rates. It can't, for two reasons:

• The fee rule. A merchant account belongs to one country. Cards from the other country are cross-border on it, whatever currency you charge.
• The gateway. A payment gateway connects your website or checkout to your merchant account. Authorize.Net's own help center says its accounts "are set to one currency. If another currency is needed another account will need to be created" (Authorize.Net KB 000001210). A CAD account and a USD account need two gateways.

How START sets up "both":

• A Canadian merchant account that processes in CAD, with its own Authorize.Net gateway.
• A U.S. merchant account that processes in USD, with its own Authorize.Net gateway.
• Both set up and managed together by START, so you have one team for both countries.

START is a registered MSP/ISO of Elavon and the Canadian branch of U.S. Bank National Association, and has set up more than 60,000 Authorize.Net accounts.

Sending each sale to the right account. Your checkout needs a way to send Canadian orders to the Canadian gateway and U.S. orders to the U.S. one. Businesses usually do this by storefront or by currency, for example a CAD checkout for Canadian shoppers and a USD checkout for U.S. shoppers. It works best when customers check out in their own country's currency. How you set it up depends on your cart; see Authorize.Net in Canada for carts and setup.

Showing prices in your customer's currency is a separate decision from where the sale is processed. There are two common ways to do it, and they work differently.

Neither one turns a foreign card into a domestic sale. Some processors offer both as add-ons, and Elavon Canada publishes both services. Tell us how you sell and we'll tell you what fits your accounts.

Visa's DCC rules (Visa Core Rules, April 2026 edition, section 5.8.9). A merchant offering DCC must:

• tell the cardholder that DCC is optional
• not pre-select it
• get the cardholder's express agreement
• not convert the sale after it's approved

Cardholders can dispute a DCC sale that breaks these rules.

Who pays for the conversion. If you charge a Canadian card in USD, your customer's bank converts it and usually adds its foreign-currency fee (typically 2.5% in Canada). If you price in CAD, the conversion happens on your side and its cost shows up in what you're paid. Either way someone pays for the conversion. With two accounts, most customers pay in their own currency on a domestic account, and neither of you pays a conversion fee on that sale.

Settlement is the deposit of your card sales into your bank account. The options in the market generally look like this:

• CAD into a Canadian bank account: the standard for a Canadian merchant account.
• USD into a U.S. bank account: the standard for a U.S. merchant account.
• USD into a USD account at a Canadian bank: some Canadian providers publish this option, usually with its own processing account per currency. It saves a conversion if you pay U.S. suppliers in USD. It doesn't change the cross-border fees on U.S. cards.

What's available depends on the provider and the bank behind your account. Tell us how you sell and where you want to be paid, and we'll tell you what fits.