What Is Mastercard TPE Excessive Authorizations Fee?
The Mastercard Transaction Processing Excellence (TPE) Excessive Authorizations Fee is a monthly charge applied when merchants make too many authorization attempts on the same card (PAN) within a short timeframe, often due to retries after declines, card testing, or system errors.
The fee is assessed for attempts exceeding regional thresholds—typically 10 retries in 24 hours and 35 retries in 30 days, with variations by market (e.g., 7/35 in Brazil and LATAM). Fees range from $0.30–$0.55 (or local equivalent) per excess attempt, with the U.S. rate increasing to $0.50 in January 2025.
Because Mastercard reports on a delay, billing occurs two months after activity. The fee is intended to discourage unnecessary network traffic, reduce fraud risk, and highlight issues such as faulty retry logic, payment gateway errors, or operational inefficiencies.
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