Payment UpdateWeek of Oct 5
Two Mastercard fees that were not on your statement in March. Force post and fallback
TL;DR
Since April 1, 2026, Mastercard charges 9 cents on any force post transaction and a fallback avoidance fee when a chip card is swiped on the magstripe at a chip terminal. Both pass through your processor to you. Here is what triggers them and how to stop paying them.
What happened
Mastercard's April 2026 release added two fees in the US region, both effective April 1, 2026.
The Force Post Transaction Fee is 9 cents per transaction. A force post is a sale that is cleared without an approved authorization. It happens when a terminal pushes a transaction through offline, or when staff key a sale in after the fact without a live approval.
The Fallback Avoidance Fee applies to fallback transactions: a card that carries both a chip and a magnetic stripe, used at a chip-capable terminal, where the sale completes on the magstripe instead of the chip. The fee is 0.01% of the transaction on Mastercard credit, and higher, 0.10%, on Maestro debit. Fiserv's card brand bulletin lists it as 0.10% "as applicable."
Both are network fees. Your processor pays Mastercard and passes the line through to you.
What it means for you
Picture a deli with a chip reader that fails on every third card. Staff swipe to keep the line moving. Each of those swipes is now a fallback, and each one carries a fee. On its own it is small. Over a year it is constant, and to the network it looks like fraud risk, which is the reason the fee exists.
The force post fee is the one to worry about more. It shows up when sales are pushed through without an approval, which is exactly what store-and-forward and offline modes do during an outage. Nine cents a transaction is the visible cost. The invisible one is that a forced sale was never approved by the bank, so it can still be declined later.
What to do
Insert or tap first. Swipe only when the terminal prompts for it after a failed chip read, never as a habit. If a reader fails often, fix or replace the reader before you retrain the staff.
Pull three months of statements and search for the words force post, fallback or FB avoidance in the fee section. If either appears, ask your processor to show the fee as its own line so you can watch it disappear once the reader is fixed. And check your terminal's offline settings: a low offline limit means fewer forced sales when the internet drops.
Questions owners ask
Does Visa charge the same?
This is a Mastercard release. Visa publishes its own fee schedule, so check your statement for both brands.
Does tap count as fallback?
No. Contactless is a chip-grade read. Fallback is specifically a magstripe swipe when the chip was available.
Where do I find it on the statement?
In the network or card brand fees section, usually labeled force post, fallback, or FB avoidance, often with the brand name in front.
Sources
