If your customers pay with corporate or company credit cards, there's a good chance you're paying more in fees than you have to. Not because of some hidden charge — because of missing information.
It's called Level 3 processing, and with the right setup it works quietly in the background to lower your fees. Here's the plain-English version of how it works and whether it can save you money.
More detail means lower fees
Every time a card gets run, some information goes along with it. The card companies (Visa, Mastercard, Discover) charge you a fee on each sale, and here's the key part: the more detail you send with the transaction, the less they charge you.
There are three "levels" of detail:
Level 1
The basic info — card number, amount, date. This is what a normal store swipe sends, and it comes with the highest fee.
Level 2
Adds a bit more, like the tax amount.
Level 3
Sends the most — a full breakdown of what was purchased, like an itemized invoice attached to the sale. This earns the lowest fee.
One important catch: these lower rates only apply to business cards — corporate cards, purchasing cards, and government cards. Regular personal cards and debit cards don't qualify. That's why this matters if you sell to other businesses, and not so much if you run a coffee shop.
How much can you actually save?
The difference between the basic rate and the Level 3 rate is usually about half a percent to a full percent. That doesn't sound like much until you do the math on real numbers.
Say you run $100,000 a month in business card sales: at the basic rate (around 2.9%), you'd pay about $2,900 a month in fees. At the Level 3 rate (around 1.9%), that drops to about $1,900 a month.
That's roughly $1,000 a month — or $12,000 a year — back in your pocket. And you don't change your prices or ask your customers to do anything different.
The bigger your sales, the bigger this gets. On a single $50,000 invoice, one percentage point is $500 saved on that one sale.
There's a nice side benefit too. The same detailed info that lowers your fee also makes your bookkeeping easier, since invoice and item details flow right into your records. That's part of why a lot of corporate and government buyers ask for it anyway.
A recent change you should know about
Here's something that's tripping up a lot of businesses: in early 2026, Visa changed its rules. Sending detailed data the right way is now the main path to lower fees on Visa business cards — and the rules got stricter about it.
In the past, you could get away with sloppy or placeholder information (like typing "12345" for an order number) and still get the lower rate. That doesn't fly anymore. Visa now wants accurate, real details on every sale. Send the wrong info, or stale info, and you get bumped back up to the highest fee — often without anyone telling you it happened.
So a business that set this up years ago and assumed it was "taken care of" could be quietly overpaying today and not even know it.
(One note: American Express doesn't offer a Level 3 program, so for Amex, Level 2 is the best you'll get.)
Why this needs the right system
Sending all that detail correctly on every sale — and keeping up with the card companies' rule changes — isn't something you can really do by hand. A basic card terminal or online checkout usually can't even send this extra info. And if one required piece is missing, you lose the discount on that sale.
That's the job of a good payment gateway. Our Scale Payments gateway is built to send this detailed data automatically and keep it formatted the way the card companies now require. You invoice your customers the way you always have, and the system handles the rest behind the scenes so your business card sales qualify for the lowest fees they're eligible for.
Is this worth it for your business?
Level 3 saves you the most when you:
Take a fair amount of business, corporate, or purchasing cards.
Have larger sales (the savings grow with bigger tickets).
Sell to other businesses or to government agencies.
If that sounds like you, here's the one question worth asking: how many of your business card sales are actually getting the lower rate right now — versus quietly getting charged the highest one? Most owners don't know, and that gap is exactly where the money is.
Let's find out what you're missing
We'll take a look at your business card sales and show you, in plain numbers, where you could be paying less. No pressure — just a clear picture of what's possible.
Want to stop overpaying on business card sales? Reach out to Scale Payments and we'll show you what Level 3 processing can save you.