Originally Posted by moondog

There are hundreds of different rates associated with various card types, and affinity cards do rank on the high end of the spectrum, but many processors mask this complexity for the merchant. 3% (the effective rate in the above example) is steep enough to cover almost all cards even at relatively low volumes (e.g. $100k per year).

What DCC does is create an extra 200-500 basis points of padding for the sell side to divvy up among themselves at the expense of the customer.