Under Mastercard’s Specialty Merchant Registration Program (SMRP), the sponsor bank is required to register merchants with Mastercard before they can process transactions in high-risk categories, including but not limited to the categories listed below:

• Cryptocurrency: Merchants or exchanges that facilitate the purchase, sale, or trade of digital assets/cryptocurrency (MCC 6051).
• Gambling (Non-face-to-face): Businesses facilitating internet gambling, sports intrastate gambling, and government-licensed horse/dog racing (MCCs 7801, 7802, 7995).
• Government-Owned Lotteries: Entities or licensed agents engaged in the online sale of state/government lottery tickets or subscriptions (MCC 7800 for the U.S. and U.S. Territories; MCC 9406 for all other global regions).
• Skill Games & Fantasy Sports: Businesses conducting games where the outcome is determined by the skill of the participants rather than by chance, including fantasy sports leagues (MCC 7994).
• Sweepstakes: Any merchant conducting a sweepstakes must also be registered as a specialty merchant if the underlying activity of the sweepstakes falls into one of the designated specialty merchant categories.
• Pharmaceuticals (Non-face-to-face): Merchants whose primary business is selling prescription drugs online, by mail, or via telephone (MCCs 5122, 5912).
• Tobacco Products (Non-face-to-face): Merchants selling tobacco products online, by mail, or via telephone (MCC 5993).
• High-Risk Cyberlockers: Merchants providing remote digital file storage and sharing services, particularly those that offer incentives for uploading files or emphasize file distribution/sharing (MCC 4816).
• Recreational Cannabis (Canada Region Only): Merchants legally licensed to sell recreational cannabis in Canada (typically processed under MCC 5912).
• High-Risk Securities: Businesses facilitating high-risk trading activities such as binary options trading, contracts for difference (CFD), foreign exchange (Forex) currency options, cryptocurrency options, and initial coin offerings (ICOs) (MCC 6211).
• Negative Option Billing (Physical Products): Merchants selling physical products (such as cosmetics, health-care products, or vitamins) via a subscription service where the customer automatically receives the product and is billed on a recurring basis (MCC 5968).

Note: The listed Merchant Category Codes (MCCs) are for reference only. Specialty registration is determined by your specific business activities. While some MCCs always require registration, others only require it for specific high-risk use cases.

These fees apply only to pull transactions. Push transactions (OCT / MoneySend / disbursement to cards) are out of scope, and even on the pull side, certain pull types are excluded.

The new per-transaction fees apply only to direct-purchase and quasi-cash transactions. They do not apply to transactions Mastercard classifies as a funding transaction (where the cardholder loads a wallet, prepaid balance, or betting/brokerage account they control, and the actual purchase is made later from that balance).

No. The Specialty Merchant Transaction Fee and Specialty Merchant Volume Fee are net-new and take effect on the dates above.