Visa CEDP explained: what changed for Level 2 and Level 3 data

The Visa Commercial Enhanced Data Program, CEDP, is now the only way a US commercial card sale on Visa reaches the lowest data rate. If your business sells to other businesses and accepts corporate, purchasing or business cards, or if you run a platform that processes those payments for other sellers, CEDP decides whether your Level 3 data is worth anything at Visa.

This guide explains what CEDP replaced, who it applies to, what it checks, what it costs and what a seller needs in place. It is written for the business that accepts the card, not for the company that pays with it.

What CEDP replaced

Until 2025, Visa paid a lower interchange rate to any commercial card sale that carried the right Level 2 or Level 3 fields. Presence of the fields was most of the test. CEDP changed that in two steps.

• October 2025: Product 3. The old Level 3 rate for Corporate and Purchasing cards became Commercial Product 3, at 1.75% + $0.10. Product 3 is only available to sales sent through CEDP.
• April 2026: no more Level 2 rate. Visa's fee table effective October 24, 2026 has no generic Level II row for Corporate, Purchasing or Business cards. Only Commercial Level II Fuel remains.

Source: Visa USA Interchange Reimbursement Fees, rates effective October 24, 2026, page 16.

The practical effect: on Visa, a commercial card sale taken online either qualifies for Product 3 through CEDP or settles at a rate such as Card Not Present, 0.95 points higher. Level 2 data alone no longer moves the Visa rate, outside fuel.

Mastercard did not adopt anything similar. Its Data Rate I, II and III still exist in its April 2026 table, and Level 2 data still earns Data Rate II there. CEDP is a Visa program only.

Who CEDP applies to

CEDP covers US domestic commercial credit cards on Visa: Corporate, Purchasing, Fleet and Business (small business) cards. In practice it matters to:

• B2B sellers that take Visa commercial cards online, by invoice or through a customer portal;
• software platforms and payment facilitators that process those payments on behalf of many sellers;
• any business on Interchange++ pricing with meaningful commercial card volume.

Some categories sit outside it. Processors report that airlines, fleet sales with fuel only Level 2 data and GSA government Large Ticket sales are excluded from the CEDP fee. Travel, lodging, car rental and restaurant merchant categories do not qualify for Product 3 at all.

On Visa Business cards the stakes are smaller. Business Product 3 runs from 2.40% to 2.75% + $0.10 by spend tier, only 0.25 points below Business Product 1, and Business Product 2 is lower than both (Visa table, page 21).

How CEDP works

Visa does not publish the CEDP program guide; it is available to Visa clients only. What follows is how acquirers and processors that implement the program describe it.

1. Enrollment. Your acquirer or processor enrolls you in CEDP. Without enrollment there is no Product 3, whatever data you send. A verified status does not move with you if you change processors.
2. Data with the sale. Each Visa commercial card sale is sent with a CEDP flag and Level 3 line item data.
3. Review. Visa reviews the quality of a merchant's data over time, using sampling and automated checks, not only on each sale.
4. Verification. A merchant whose data passes the review becomes verified. Verified merchants get Product 3 at settlement on qualifying sales.
5. Ongoing monitoring. Visa keeps evaluating the data and reports monthly to acquirers. A merchant can lose verified status.

Processors describe the threshold and timing differently: some cite a share of compliant sales over a recent window, others a minimum number of sales, others a review over a few months. Visa has not published a number. Until you are verified, a sale can still qualify after review, with the rate adjusted later.

The program also changed during its first months. Processors report that Visa paused verification from November 20, 2025 to February 24, 2026, and that since February 24, 2026 merchants can be excluded from the program, falling back to higher rates while still paying the CEDP fee.

What CEDP checks

The biggest change is that CEDP looks at the content of the data, not only at whether the fields are filled. Visa's own material for merchants states that autofilled data does not qualify. Based on what processors publish, data tends to fail when:

• Item descriptions are generic, such as "product", "service" or "item", or a single character.
• The description repeats your business name instead of describing what was sold.
• Product codes are filler, generic, or carry other data such as the merchant category code.
• Tax is static: the same tax amount on every sale, instead of tax calculated for each sale and jurisdiction. Tax estimation is not accepted.
• Units of measure are missing.
• The arithmetic does not close: quantity times unit price does not match the line total, or the lines plus tax and freight do not match the amount charged.
• Line items repeat across sales regardless of what was actually bought.

These checks look for the same thing: data that describes the real order. A seller that pulls item descriptions, product codes and tax from its own catalog and invoice system starts in a good position. A seller that fills Level 3 fields with constants to pass a gateway's format check is the case CEDP was built to catch.

What CEDP costs

Source for the rates: Visa USA Interchange Reimbursement Fees, rates effective October 24, 2026. The CEDP fee does not appear in Visa's interchange table; the figure comes from processors.

The fee is reported to apply to sales sent with CEDP data whether or not they reach Product 3. That makes poor data worse than no data in one way: you pay the fee and still settle at the higher rate. On a $10,000 corporate card sale, Card Not Present costs $270.10; Product 3 costs $175.10 plus about $5.00 of CEDP fee. That gap, about $90, is what is at stake on that sale, and it only reaches you on Interchange++ pricing. On blended pricing, the gateway keeps it.

What a seller needs in place

None of these guarantees Product 3. Each one removes a known reason for failing.

1. Interchange++ pricing, so a lower Visa rate shows up on your statement.
2. CEDP enrollment confirmed with your acquirer or processor.
3. A gateway that sends Level 3 line items for Visa commercial cards, such as Stripe or Adyen.
4. Descriptions and product codes from your own catalog, specific to the item, never your business name.
5. Tax calculated per sale for the right jurisdiction, with zero only where no tax applies.
6. Units of measure on every line.
7. Line items that add up to the amount charged.
8. A way to watch the result: your fee report shows the interchange program each sale reached. Processors also publish CEDP status reports for their merchants.

If you are a platform processing for many sellers, the same list applies to each seller's data. One seller with generic descriptions can fail review while others pass.

How to tell whether CEDP is working for you

Look at your Visa commercial card sales in your gateway's fee report and group them by interchange program. Three patterns are common:

• Most sales at Card Not Present: Level 3 data is not reaching Visa, or you are not enrolled.
• A mix of Product 3 and Card Not Present: data reaches Visa but some sales or some products fail the checks.
• Product 3 that disappears after a few months: verification was lost after monitoring.

Interchange shows up on fee reports with a delay, so give each change a few weeks before you judge it. For the field requirements behind Product 3, see Level 3 credit card processing: requirements for B2B sellers. For the full rate tables, see Commercial card interchange rates: Visa and Mastercard.

Check your own sales

If you accept corporate cards through Adyen or Stripe, run a free diagnostic at tierback.com. It reads your gateway fee report, finds the Visa and Mastercard commercial card sales that settled above the data rates and estimates what that cost, so you can see whether CEDP is working for you.