Higher Interchange Powers Keep Growth

The core point is that Keep can fund a lot more product with card spend than a European peer can. On a $100 transaction, a Canada or U.S. style corporate card program can keep roughly $1.80 to $2.00 of interchange, while an EU consumer credit card is capped at $0.30. That gap helps explain why Keep can subsidize expense software, FX features, and credit, while European players more often need subscription revenue to make the model work.

• In practice, interchange is the toll paid to the card issuer every time a customer uses the card. For Keep, that means every employee purchase on a Visa card can generate revenue before the customer buys lending or FX. That creates a simple growth loop, more spend, more interchange, more room to add software and credit features.
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• Europe forces a different playbook. EU rules cap consumer credit interchange at 0.3%, and Pleo is built accordingly, with subscription fees as a primary revenue stream and interchange as a supplement. That is a useful contrast for Keep, whose market economics look closer to Brex and Ramp than to European expense software.
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• Canada sits between the U.S. and EU. Canada has reduced small business merchant fees on domestic consumer credit cards, but not down to EU levels, and network schedules still show commercial and business card programs above those caps. That leaves enough revenue per swipe for Keep, Float, and Loop to attack a still underbuilt Canadian corporate card market.
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Going forward, the winners in Canada will use this higher interchange base to move beyond cards into the full finance stack. The next layer is already visible, lending, accounts, bill pay, and cross-border money movement. If Keep keeps turning card spend into attached financial products, the business can compound the way U.S. leaders did, not the way EU expense tools had to.