Visa Commercial Enhanced Data Program (CEDP): Your First Class, All Access Pass

Visa’s CEDP is one of the biggest shifts in commercial card processing in years. Here’s what you need to know, and why it matters for your business.

CEDP At-a-Glance

Summary

Visa is retiring its legacy Level 2 and Level 3 interchange programs for U.S. domestic small business and commercial credit products. In their place comes CEDP: a new framework  that enables the exchange of high-quality, invoice-level data with every transaction, like sales tax info and product details.

With enhanced validation technology, CEDP provides interchange incentives to merchants that submit complete, accurate, and verifiable data* with each transaction. Merchants who don't meet these standards will see higher processing costs and may incur penalties.

*Verifiable data= Accurate information that can be validated by Visa Commercial Solutions (VCS).

What’s Changing?

CEDP reshapes how Visa Small Business and Commercial Card transactions (think: Corporate, Purchasing, and Government cards) qualify for lower interchange rates: 

• Visa’s Small Business and Commercial Level 2 and 3 programs, along with its Large Ticket programs, are replaced with new Product 3 categories

• CEDP’s Product 3 categories provide reduced interchange rates to merchants who supply high-quality transaction data

To support this change, Visa groups merchants into two categories based on historical data quality validation results over time:

• Verified Merchants
  
  • Consistently provide complete and accurate data for qualifying transactions
  • Qualify for reduced Product 3 interchange rates
  • Minor, infrequent errors are allowed ‍

• Unverified Merchants
  
  • Fail to consistently provide required enhanced data — often because the data is missing, incomplete, or includes placeholder information
  • Do not qualify for incentives and instead receive non-CEDP rates at settlement
  • If inaccurate data submissions continue, these merchants risk being removed from Product 3 pricing

Why the shift to CEDP?

Under the old Level 2/3 system, merchants could enter default or “dummy” data and still earn lower rates. CEDP closes that loophole.

By requiring higher-quality data, Visa delivers value across the entire payments ecosystem:

• Corporations and government agencies receive better reporting and smoother reconciliation

• Card issuers can manage their programs more effectively

• Merchants that submit comprehensive data access lower rates, plus improved financial reporting, vendor management, and purchasing insights

CEDP Timeline

October 2024: Initial Announcement

• Visa first announces CEDP

April 2025: New Participation Fee

• A 0.05% per transaction ‘participation’ fee is applied to all CEDP transactions (Level 2 and 3 data)  
  
  • Fleet fuel-only Level 2 and GSA Government Large Ticket transactions are not part of CEDP and will not be assessed the participation fee

• The following interchange program names have been updated:
  
  • Legacy Commercial Fuel Level 3 --> CEDP Commercial Fuel Product 3
  • Legacy Corporate Non-Travel Level 3 --> CEDP Corporate Non-Travel Product 3
  • Legacy Purchasing Non-Travel Level 3 --> CEDP Purchasing Non-Travel Product 3

October 2025: Full Enforcement

• Visa Commercial Solutions (VCS) validates Level 2 and Level 3 data for accuracy

• Transactions that provide complete, accurate enhanced data will qualify for the best Product 3 rates  

• Transactions that do not contain accurate Level 2 and 3 data will no longer qualify for Level 3 interchange rates

April 2026: Legacy Level 2 Sunset

• Commercial and Small Business Level 2 interchange programs are sunset

• Fleet Level 2 Fuel-Only transactions are not impacted (remain on existing rates)

Let’s turn these changes into opportunities.

Have questions about how Visa’s Commercial Enhanced Data Program impacts your business? Our team is here to help.