On April 17th, 2009, MasterCard began assessing a Network Access and Brand Usage (NABU) Fee of $0.0185 for all U.S. issued cards settled with MasterCard. EMG has decided to pass this fee through to merchants as a direct cost with no mark-up.

What is the NABU fee for?

Unfortunately, MasterCard has not been too forthcoming with the details on how they determined the cost structure for the fee or that fee is going to be used. EMG does know that MasterCard has implemented this new $0.0185 NABU fee to replace the $0.005 transaction fee that they were charging previously. Since MasterCard is keeping the entire $0.0185 per transaction and not passing it along to the card issuing banks, we can surmise that they intend to build up the security of their data network for cardholder protection aloing with increasing their marketing efforts to promote card usage.

How is the fee displayed on the EMG Merchant Statement?

The MasterCard NABU Fee will begin showing up on the April 2009 statement (that is received in May) and listed as MC BRAND USAGE.