If your business accepts corporate cards, purchasing cards, or government-issued cards, you've been operating under a deal with Visa: submit detailed transaction data, get a lower interchange rate. That deal was called Level 3 processing.
Visa changed the terms in April 2025.
The Commercial Enhanced Data Program — CEDP — replaced the legacy Level 2 and Level 3 interchange framework. Visa began enforcing the new standard on October 17, 2025. The Level 2 program is being retired this month, April 2026. If your processor hasn't migrated, you're already losing the discount on commercial card transactions — you just haven't been told.
What Level 3 data was, and why it existed
When a business pays with a corporate or purchasing card, the issuing bank needs more information than it does on a consumer transaction to categorize and approve the charge. A corporate card at a $40,000 contract payment triggers more scrutiny than a personal card at a coffee shop.
Visa and Mastercard created tiered data standards to address this. The more detail a merchant submitted with a commercial card transaction — line-item data, purchase order numbers, tax amounts, ship-to ZIP codes, item descriptions, unit prices, quantities — the lower the interchange rate they qualified for. The logic: detailed data reduces fraud risk and chargeback exposure, so the networks charge less for it.
The three tiers worked like this:
| Level | Data Required | Interchange Benefit | |---|---|---| | Level 1 | Merchant name, amount, date | Standard rates — baseline for all transactions | | Level 2 | Adds tax amount, customer/PO code, merchant ZIP | ~0.10–0.50% below Level 1 on B2B transactions | | Level 3 | Full line-item detail: descriptions, quantities, unit costs, ship-to ZIP, freight, discount, tax per line | Up to 1.00% below standard — the largest available discount on commercial cards |
For any B2B business regularly invoicing other companies or government agencies, Level 3 qualification could mean thousands of dollars per month in savings. A $100,000 government contract payment qualifying for Level 3 instead of standard rates saves $600–$1,000 on that single transaction depending on card type.
Why Visa replaced it
The legacy framework had a data quality problem. Many merchants who technically submitted Level 3 data submitted it incompletely — item descriptions filled with placeholder text, tax fields set to zero on taxable purchases, ZIP codes missing. Visa was giving out interchange discounts on transactions that didn't deliver the data quality the discount was designed to reward.
CEDP fixes this with machine learning validation at submission. Visa now validates over 100 data fields per transaction. Incomplete fields, generic descriptions, or filler values disqualify the transaction from preferred rates. The discount is earned on every transaction, not assumed based on program enrollment.
There's also a meaningful expansion: Business Credit cards now qualify for CEDP (Product 3) interchange rates for the first time. Under Level 3, those cards were excluded. That's a new savings category for any merchant whose B2B clients pay with business credit rather than corporate or purchasing cards.
What the savings look like under CEDP
CEDP rates vary by card product and merchant category code. Visa publishes its full commercial interchange schedule — that's the right place to look up the exact categories that apply to your card mix.
The directional savings are consistent with what Level 3 offered and in some categories better: CEDP-validated corporate and purchasing card transactions qualify for rates significantly below what standard interchange charges on the same transaction. The gap between a validated CEDP submission and a defaulted standard-rate transaction typically runs 0.50% to 1.00%+ depending on card type.
On a $50,000 B2B invoice, a 0.75% difference is $375 on that single payment. Across a business processing $500,000/month in commercial card volume, qualified CEDP submissions versus standard interchange is a $3,750–$5,000/month difference — over $45,000 a year from the same transaction base.
That's before accounting for Business Credit cards, which now qualify for Product 3 rates under CEDP for the first time. Merchants whose clients pay with business credit cards rather than dedicated corporate or purchasing cards have a new savings category that simply didn't exist under Level 3.
Who it affects
Any business that regularly invoices other businesses or government agencies and accepts commercial cards for payment. That covers a wider category than most merchants realize:
Professional services firms billing corporate clients — consulting, legal, accounting, engineering — typically run a high share of corporate and purchasing card volume. Contractors and construction companies processing progress payments from commercial property managers or government agencies qualify; the math on large commercial card transactions makes CEDP savings particularly significant at high ticket sizes. Technology vendors and SaaS companies invoicing enterprise customers on purchasing cards, wholesale and distribution businesses, and any government contractor processing GSA SmartPay or municipal purchasing cards all fall inside the scope.
And now — with CEDP's inclusion of Business Credit cards — merchants whose clients pay with standard business credit cards rather than dedicated purchasing or corporate cards have a new reason to verify their processor's CEDP status.
Consumer-facing retail and restaurant businesses aren't affected. Consumer credit and debit interchange runs on a separate rate structure. But if any real share of your monthly volume comes from B2B or B2G transactions, what your processor submits on those cards is either saving you money or costing you it.
The processor gap
Here's the problem: CEDP qualification happens at the processor and gateway level. You can't submit CEDP-validated data manually per transaction at any meaningful volume. Either your payment infrastructure does it automatically or it doesn't.
Most small-business processors don't support CEDP yet. Flat-rate platforms like Square, Stripe's standard tier, and PayPal have no Level 3 or CEDP capability by design — their pricing model is a blended rate regardless of card type, so the distinction doesn't apply to them (and works against them commercially). Many traditional ISO processors technically support Level 3 but haven't migrated to CEDP validation, which means their merchants' transactions are nominally submitting enhanced data but failing Visa's new quality checks.
Before assuming your current processor covers this, ask two direct questions:
- Does your gateway automatically submit CEDP-validated data on commercial card transactions?
- Can you show me documentation of your enrollment in Visa's Commercial Enhanced Data Program?
If the answer to the first question is anything other than "yes, automatically," your commercial card transactions are likely defaulting to standard interchange rates regardless of what data is being submitted.
What CEDP compliance actually requires
For merchants, CEDP compliance is primarily a processor configuration question rather than an operational change. The data required for a fully validated CEDP submission comes from your invoice — item descriptions, quantities, unit costs, tax amounts, PO numbers, ship-to details. Most accounting and invoicing systems already capture this data.
The question is whether your payment gateway pulls that data into the transaction record and formats it to Visa's current CEDP specifications at submission time. A processor with native CEDP support does this automatically when the card type is detected as commercial. You run your invoice through your normal workflow; the gateway handles the rest on the backend.
At ClickWerxs, CEDP-validated data submission is handled automatically on qualifying transactions for all merchants on interchange-plus pricing. When a corporate or purchasing card is detected, the gateway populates the required CEDP fields from invoice data, validates the submission against Visa's current specifications, and routes the transaction to qualify for the best available commercial interchange rate. Merchants don't do anything differently — they just stop paying standard rates on commercial card volume.
If you're not sure what you're currently paying on your commercial card transactions, auditing your merchant statement is the place to start. The effective rate on your B2B volume versus your consumer card volume tells you quickly whether enhanced data is being submitted and qualifying. If both numbers are similar, it's almost certainly not.
The CEDP timeline
Three dates matter:
April 2025 — Visa launched CEDP and introduced a 0.05% participation fee on all Level 2, Level 3, and Large Ticket transactions. This was the starting gun.
October 17, 2025 — Visa began enforcing CEDP validation. From this date, only transactions from processors submitting complete, accurate, validated enhanced data qualify for preferred rates. Transactions that fail validation default to standard interchange — no notification to the merchant.
April 2026 — The legacy Level 2 interchange program is retired for Small Business and Commercial credit products. This month.
If your processor migrated before October 2025, your qualifying transactions have been earning CEDP rates since enforcement began. If they haven't migrated, you've been paying standard interchange on commercial card volume for the past six months with nothing on your statement to flag it.
The way to check: pull your last merchant statement and compare your effective rate on commercial card transactions against what you'd expect at current Visa interchange rates for your card categories. If the numbers don't reflect enhanced data pricing, they almost certainly aren't.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Visa's CEDP program?
CEDP (Commercial Enhanced Data Program) is Visa's replacement for the legacy Level 2 and Level 3 interchange framework for B2B and commercial card transactions. Launched in April 2025 and enforced from October 17, 2025, CEDP uses machine learning to validate over 100 data fields per transaction. Merchants whose processors submit complete, validated enhanced data qualify for preferred interchange rates. Those whose processors don't default to standard rates — with no notification attached. Visa's Commercial Data Solutions page has the program overview.
Is Level 3 data being phased out?
Yes. Visa's legacy Level 2 interchange program is being retired in April 2026. The Level 3 program has been replaced by CEDP (Product 3), which carries the same line-item data requirements but adds machine learning validation that legacy Level 3 did not have. Transactions that would have qualified under the old Level 3 framework still qualify under CEDP — but only if the processor submits fully validated, accurate data. Placeholder values, missing fields, or generic descriptions that might have slipped through before no longer qualify.
Does my processor support CEDP?
Most flat-rate processors (Square, Stripe standard, PayPal) do not support enhanced data submission and are not relevant to this question. For traditional processors, you need to ask directly whether your gateway submits CEDP-validated data automatically on commercial card transactions. If your processor doesn't know what CEDP is, you have your answer.
How much can B2B companies save with CEDP?
It depends on card mix, average ticket size, and merchant category. The rate gap between a CEDP-validated submission and standard interchange typically runs 0.50% to 1.00%+ on corporate and purchasing card transactions, per Visa's published interchange schedules. On high-volume commercial card processing, that adds up fast — the dollar impact is best calculated against your own statement rather than industry averages, since card mix varies significantly by business type. A free statement review gives you the exact number for your volume.
Do I need to do anything to enable CEDP?
If your processor supports CEDP natively, the answer is usually no — the gateway handles data submission automatically when it detects a commercial card. If your processor doesn't support it, you can't enable CEDP manually at any meaningful volume. The fix is switching to a processor with native CEDP capability.
Visa's enforcement date was October 17, 2025. If your processor hadn't migrated by then, your commercial card transactions have been defaulting to standard interchange for six months. The savings aren't gone — they're just sitting on the table.
The merchants capturing them are the ones whose payment infrastructure submits clean, validated data on every qualifying transaction automatically, without anyone having to think about it. That's the whole point of CEDP compliance at the processor level.
If you want to know what you're actually qualifying for on your commercial card volume, ClickWerxs offers free merchant statement reviews. We'll look at your effective rate on B2B transactions and tell you exactly where you stand.