If you run a café in Canada, Interac debit is almost certainly one of the cheapest ways you can get paid — and on Square it is priced very differently from a credit card. Yet most owners never look at the split. They see one “processing fees” line on the statement and assume every tap costs the same. It does not.
This guide lays out exactly what Square charges for Interac debit in Canada, how that compares to credit and online rates, and the small, honest levers a café can pull to lower its blended processing cost without doing anything sketchy or surcharging customers.
What does Square charge for Interac debit in Canada?
Square’s published Canadian rate for Interac debit — tapped, inserted, or swiped in person — is 0.75% + $0.07 per transaction. There is no monthly fee, no statement fee, and no separate authorization fee stacked on top. What you see is what you pay.
To make that concrete, here is the per-transaction cost at a few common café ticket sizes:
| Ticket | Interac debit (0.75% + 7¢) | In-person credit (2.5%) | You keep (debit) |
|---|---|---|---|
| $4.50 latte | ~$0.10 | ~$0.11 | $4.40 |
| $6.00 drink + pastry | ~$0.115 | ~$0.15 | $5.885 |
| $12.00 lunch | ~$0.16 | ~$0.30 | $11.84 |
| $25.00 small group | ~$0.2575 | ~$0.625 | $24.74 |
| $60.00 catering pickup | ~$0.52 | ~$1.50 | $59.48 |
Rates: Square Canada fee schedule, 2026. Always confirm current rates for your account before you decide.
The pattern is worth internalizing. On a small coffee, debit and credit cost almost the same in absolute cents, because the flat 7¢ dominates. As the ticket grows, the 0.75%-vs-2.5% percentage gap takes over and debit pulls decisively ahead. For a café with a lot of $15–$40 tickets — lunch, catering, retail bags of beans — steering those to debit is real money.
How Interac debit compares to Square’s other rates
Square in Canada has three headline rates a café actually touches:
- Interac debit, in person: 0.75% + $0.07. The cheapest card-present option.
- Credit and prepaid cards, in person: 2.5%. Tap, insert, swipe, or Tap to Pay on iPhone/Android — same rate.
- Online / e-commerce: 2.8% + $0.30. Square Online, the e-commerce API, subscriptions, and in-app ordering run here.
A card issued outside Canada adds a 1.5% international fee on top of the base rate, which matters if you are in a tourist-heavy neighbourhood.
The takeaway: the counter is where your cheapest and most-controllable rate lives, and Interac is the cheapest lane at the counter. Anything that moves to a card — especially anything online — costs more per dollar. That is not a reason to avoid online ordering (the commission you avoid by taking orders direct dwarfs the processing difference), but it is a reason to understand your mix. For the full in-person picture, see our breakdown of Square’s fees for restaurants explained.
Why the debit-vs-credit gap matters more than it looks
Say a café does $40,000/month in card sales with an average ticket of $9, so roughly 4,400 transactions. Watch how the blended cost moves with the debit share.
Scenario A — 30% of sales on Interac debit, 70% on credit:
- Debit: $12,000 × 0.75% = $90.00, plus 1,320 txns × $0.07 = $92.40 → $182.40
- Credit: $28,000 × 2.5% = $700.00
- Total: ~$882/month, a blended rate of about 2.21%.
Scenario B — 55% of sales on Interac debit, 45% on credit:
- Debit: $22,000 × 0.75% = $165.00, plus 2,420 txns × $0.07 = $169.40 → $334.40
- Credit: $18,000 × 2.5% = $450.00
- Total: ~$784/month, a blended rate of about 1.96%.
That is roughly $98/month, or about $1,180/year, saved just by nudging a bigger share of counter payments onto Interac — same sales, same customers, no surcharge, no new hardware. (These figures are illustrative, using Square’s published Canadian rates against an assumed sales mix; your own numbers will differ.)
You will not control the mix perfectly — customers pay how they pay, and pushing too hard is a bad look. But small defaults matter, and Canadians tap debit constantly when the option is obvious.
How to (gently) shift more volume to Interac
None of this is about refusing cards or shaming anyone at the till. It is about making debit the easy default:
- Make sure your reader visibly accepts Interac tap. Every current Square reader, stand, and terminal in Canada takes contactless Interac (Interac Flash) and chip-and-PIN at the 0.75% + 7¢ rate. If your hardware or app is out of date, debit tap may be failing over to a pricier path. Our Square hardware guide for cafés covers which devices do what.
- Let the customer choose their own card. When the terminal simply prompts “tap, insert, or swipe,” most locals reach for debit on their own. You do not need to say a word.
- Keep the transaction card-present. Debit’s cheap rate only exists in person. Phone orders you key in, and any online order, run as card-not-present. That is a fine reason to move phone orders to a proper online or in-app ordering flow rather than keying cards by hand.
- Do not surcharge debit. In Canada, Interac debit surcharging is broadly prohibited, and credit-card surcharging carries its own rules and caps. This guide is about your cost mix, not passing fees to guests — for that topic see credit card surcharges in Canada and the US.
If you want to attack processing cost more broadly — batch settlement, keyed-entry habits, refund handling — we cover the levers in how to reduce Square processing fees at a café.
Where Interac fits once you add mobile ordering
Here is the honest boundary. Interac debit is a counter advantage. The moment an order comes in through a website or a branded app, it is card-not-present and runs at Square’s online rate of 2.8% + 30¢ — Interac simply is not part of that flow today.
That is not a knock on online ordering. The economics still favour it massively, because the thing you are escaping online is not a 2% processing difference — it is the 15–30% commission a third-party marketplace takes on every order. Paying 2.8% + 30¢ to own the customer, the data, and the repeat visit is one of the best trades in the business. We walk through it in how to take online orders without commission.
So the clean mental model for a Canadian café is:
- At the counter: let customers tap Interac. Cheapest rate, no effort.
- Online and in-app: accept cards and wallets at 2.8% + 30¢, and make it up many times over by cutting out commissions and building loyalty you own.
When customers order ahead in a branded app, they still fund the payment with the card in their Apple Pay or Google Pay wallet — you just recognize that channel costs a little more per transaction than a debit tap, and it is worth it for what it unlocks.
The bottom line
Interac debit is quietly the best rate a Canadian café gets from Square: 0.75% + 7¢, versus 2.5% for in-person credit and 2.8% + 30¢ online. You do not need to do anything drastic to benefit — just keep your hardware current, let customers tap debit at the till, and understand that the cheap rate is a card-present, counter-only advantage.
For everything that leaves the counter, the right question is not “how do I get the debit rate online” (you cannot) but “how do I stop paying commissions.” A branded ordering app on your existing Square POS answers that directly. That is what Tany does — order-ahead pickup, self-running loyalty, and web ordering on top of your Square account, $99 CAD/month per location, live in about a day. Interac keeps the counter cheap; owning your online channel keeps the rest of your revenue yours.