Visa CEDP: Why Your B2B Payment Rates Depend on Data Quality

Eight months into Visa’s Commercial Enhanced Data Program, the cost of non-verification is showing up on processing statements. Most businesses are finding the problem starts well before a payment is made.

Visa’s Commercial Enhanced Data Program (CEDP) began actively assessing merchant data in October 2025. For the first several months, many B2B businesses felt limited impact. That’s changing fast.

As more transaction history accumulates under Visa’s AI-driven validation model, businesses are seeing the real cost on their processing statements. Some are further from compliance than they thought. And most are discovering the problem isn’t their payment processor—it’s the data flowing into payments from their business systems.

We covered the mechanics of CEDP (including how verification works, what the interchange rate differences look like, and how Fortis-integrated ERP platforms support compliance) in an earlier post. This post is about what businesses are finding out now that the program is real and the costs are visible.

What Is Visa CEDP and How Does Verification Work?

Visa’s Commercial Enhanced Data Program (CEDP) replaces the traditional Level 2 and Level 3 interchange framework with a single AI-driven verification model. To qualify for Visa’s preferred Product 3 interchange rates, merchants must pass an ongoing review of their transaction data. The required fields go well beyond basic payment information and include:

Purchase order numbers

Product descriptions and SKUs

Quantities and unit costs

Extended line-item totals

Tax information, including tax-exempt status

Freight and shipping amounts

Duty amounts where applicable

Visa evaluates qualification transaction by transaction but determines verification status at the merchant level. If your data doesn’t consistently meet Visa’s requirements across your transaction history, your entire account misses Product 3 rates—even if most of your transactions are clean. Visa retired the legacy Level 2 and Level 3 commercial interchange framework in April 2026, so there’s no fallback path for Visa Product 3 qualification.

Businesses without verified status may see rate increases of approximately 0.75% depending on card category and transaction profile. At meaningful B2B payment volume, that is a material and recurring cost.

Why Are So Many B2B Businesses Failing CEDP Verification?

Two things are tripping businesses up, and the second one is less obvious than the first.

The first is the end of data backfilling. For years, some businesses believed they were processing at Level 3 standards because their processors were manufacturing required data fields behind the scenes. Visa’s AI validation reviews actual transaction data, and backfilled or incomplete fields do not pass. Businesses that were relying on that shortcut, often without knowing it, are now finding out the hard way.

The second and more widespread issue is ERP data quality and connectivity.

PO numbers, SKUs, unit costs, freight details, tax amounts and status: that information originates in your ERP, your order management system, your invoicing workflow. It doesn’t live in your payment process. If it’s incomplete, inconsistently captured, or siloed from your payment integration, no processor can fix it at the point of transaction.

“CEDP is revealing something that has been true for a long time: payment performance is downstream of data quality,” says Kevin Shamoun, SVP, Product & Innovation, Fortis. “If the information in your ERP is incomplete or siloed, it will show up in your interchange rates now. The businesses that treat this as an operational readiness problem, not just a payments compliance question, are the ones that will come out ahead.”

ERPs were built to manage inventory, customer records, invoicing, and finance—not payment data requirements. For many businesses, the data Visa needs technically exists somewhere in their systems. It just isn’t flowing cleanly and consistently into payment transactions the way CEDP now requires.

What Data Does Visa CEDP Actually Require?

CEDP verification requires complete, accurate transaction-level data with each B2B Visa card payment. The challenge isn’t knowing what the fields are—Visa has published those clearly. The challenge is whether your business systems can reliably produce and transmit that data for every transaction, across every payment path.

That includes standard invoiced sales—but also counter transactions, customer down payments, partial orders, and every other payment scenario your business runs. Each one carries its own data completeness risk, and Visa’s all-or-nothing merchant-level verification means a weak transaction type can drag down your entire account’s qualification status.

What Should Finance Leaders Be Asking About CEDP Readiness?

If you are evaluating your CEDP position, the right starting point is not your payment processor’s dashboard. It is your order-to-cash process.

Start by mapping where transaction data falls off. From quote to order to invoice to payment, track where line-item detail gets recorded and where it gets dropped. The gaps in that map are your CEDP risk.

Counter transactions, customer down payments, and partial orders tend to carry less detail than standard invoiced sales—and they’re the transaction types businesses most often overlook when assessing their compliance position.

Also look at how directly your ERP connects to your payment integration. If required fields need manual entry or aren’t mapped directly from your ERP, you’re relying on a process that produces inconsistent data at scale—and inconsistent data fails verification.

Finally, know your Visa commercial card volume. The higher the volume, the higher the financial exposure of non-verification. That number helps you build the business case for closing gaps and prioritize where to start.

Visa CEDP compliance is an opportunity, not just a requirement

CEDP is a compliance requirement. It’s also a forcing function for getting business data and payment data into genuine alignment—something most B2B teams have been putting off.

Businesses that close that gap will not just qualify for better B2B interchange rates. They will have cleaner transaction records, better reporting visibility, and payment workflows that actually reflect how their business operates. That compounds over time. Better data means fewer reconciliation exceptions, more accurate cash flow visibility, and a stronger foundation for whatever payment requirements come next.

The businesses that treat CEDP as a one-time fix will keep fighting this battle. The ones that treat it as a reason to modernize how operational data connects to payments will be in a meaningfully better position going forward, on costs, on efficiency, and on readiness.

Ready to Assess Your CEDP Readiness?

Payment rates that depend on data quality aren’t a future problem. They’re on statements right now. If you want to know where your gaps are and what it would take to close them, talk to us.

Talk to a Fortis Expert