Selling to Canadian Customers from the U.S.: Cards, CAD and Checkout

Three terms explain the bill:

• Interchange is the fee that goes to the bank that issued your customer's card. It's the biggest part of any card fee.
• The acquirer is the bank that holds your merchant account and deposits your sales. A U.S. merchant account has a U.S. acquirer.
• The issuing country is where the customer's card comes from. When it differs from your acquirer's country, the sale is cross-border, whatever currency you charge in.

So a Canadian card on a U.S. account pays international interchange plus the networks' cross-border fees. Here are the numbers as published in 2026:

Sources: Visa USA interchange rates (international table, effective April 18, 2026); network assessments from a U.S. acquirer's published pass-through schedule (Fiserv, effective April 2026). Checked September 27, 2026. Your processor's markup comes on top.

A worked example. A Canadian customer pays $100 (USD) online with a Visa Classic card. If the sale takes Visa's 1.60% international rate, the network costs are about $1.60 interchange + $1.00 service assessment + $0.45 acquirer fee = $3.05, or about 3.05%, before any markup. Charge the same sale in CAD and the service assessment rises to 1.40%, so about 3.45%. A Visa Infinite card pushes both higher.

Cross-border online sales also tend to be declined more often than domestic ones, because issuers treat foreign merchants with more caution. For how these fees work in both directions and how START structures two-country setups, see U.S. and Canada cross-border payments. The same fees apply the other way, to U.S. cards on a Canadian account; see how Canadian businesses take payments from U.S. customers.

On a Canadian merchant account, Canadian cards are domestic sales. The cross-border assessments above drop away and Canadian interchange applies. For comparison, Visa Canada lists 1.40% for a Classic consumer credit card online (Visa Canada interchange rates, checked September 2026). Details are in credit card processing fees in Canada.

Some rough math shows when it matters. At $30,000 (USD) a month in Canadian Visa sales on a U.S. account, the service assessment and acquirer fee alone are 1.45%, or about $435 a month, before the higher international interchange. A second account has its own costs, so weigh them against that number.

A Canadian account usually makes sense when:

• Canadian customers are a steady share of your sales, not the odd order
• You want to show prices and charge in Canadian dollars
• You sell in person in Canada, or want to accept Interac Debit
• You have, or plan, a Canadian location, staff or warehouse

What it typically involves. Canadian providers typically ask for a Canadian business presence and a Canadian bank account for deposits, plus the usual application documents. What your business needs depends on how it's set up, so tell us your structure and we'll tell you what applies. Canadian merchant account requirements covers the documents.

How START sets up "both". Canada is one of START's specialties. For a business selling in both countries we set up two merchant accounts: a Canadian account in CAD and a U.S. account in USD. Each has its own Authorize.Net gateway, and we set them up and manage them together. It isn't one dual-currency account, because Authorize.Net sets each gateway account to one currency.

You have three ways to show prices to a Canadian shopper. Each puts the currency cost on someone different.

Charging in CAD from a U.S. account needs a processor that supports multi-currency pricing, and not all do. Ask before you change your store.

Dynamic currency conversion (DCC) is different. It offers the customer the choice, at checkout, to pay in their own currency instead of yours, at a rate the DCC provider sets. Visa's rules (Visa Core Rules, April 2026 edition) say the merchant must:

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

Customers can dispute a sale that broke those rules. Whether DCC is offered depends on the processor, so ask. Pricing in two currencies goes deeper on DCC and multi-currency pricing.

Interac Debit is Canada's domestic debit network, the one Canadians use when they pay straight from a bank account. A U.S. merchant account won't give you Interac. It comes through one of the Canadian acquirers Interac lists.

According to Interac's business page (checked September 27, 2026), businesses accept it:

• In person: tap, chip and PIN, and Tap to Pay on iPhone and Android phones
• Online and in apps: through Apple Pay and Google Pay

If you sell only online and customers type in a card number, Interac isn't part of that checkout. It matters most for businesses that sell in person in Canada. Elavon is one of the acquirers Interac lists. If Interac matters to how you sell, ask us whether it fits your setup.

Address verification (AVS). AVS compares the billing address a customer types with the one their card issuer has on file. Canadian postal codes use letters and numbers (A1A 1A1), not a five-digit ZIP. Before you open to Canada:

• Make sure your checkout accepts provinces and Canadian postal codes
• Place a test order with a Canadian address and see how your gateway's AVS settings treat it
• If good Canadian orders get declined, adjust the rule rather than turning AVS off, and pair it with other fraud prevention tools

Online cross-border orders carry more fraud risk, so read up on card-not-present fraud before you change settings.

Duties and taxes at the border. The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) sets these thresholds for goods from the U.S. or Mexico that qualify under CUSMA, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (CBSA, page modified November 25, 2025):

Some items, such as alcohol, tobacco and cannabis, are exceptions. Canada has also put surtaxes on some U.S.-origin goods, and those rules change often. Check CBSA Customs Notice 26-23 (effective September 8, 2026) and any later notices for what you sell.

A customer who gets an unexpected bill at the door may refuse the package or dispute the charge. Showing duties and taxes at checkout, or telling buyers plainly that they may owe them, avoids that.

GST/HST registration. The Canada Revenue Agency's simplified GST/HST rules for non-resident sellers use a CAD 30,000 threshold over 12 months. They cover digital products and services sold to Canadian consumers and goods sold from inside Canada, such as from a Canadian fulfillment warehouse. See CRA: find out if you need to register, and talk to a tax advisor.

General payments guidance, not legal or tax advice. Rules and rates as of September 27, 2026.

A Canadian merchant account comes with Canadian rules. Three are worth knowing before you sign:

• The Code of Conduct for the Payment Card Industry in Canada. Overseen by the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC), it requires 30 to 60 days' notice of a fee change, and lets you cancel without penalty within 70 days of a fee increase or new fee (2024 revision, in effect). See switching payment processors in Canada.
• Surcharges follow Canadian caps. Visa Canada allows a surcharge on credit cards only, capped at the lesser of 2.4% or your cost, with 30 days' notice. That's lower than Visa's 3% U.S. cap. See credit card surcharge rules in Canada.
• Quebec is different. The FCAC says surcharging is an option "except in Quebec", where the Consumer Protection Act requires the advertised price to include everything a consumer pays other than sales tax. Don't surcharge Quebec consumers.