April card brand fee updates can quietly reshape the economics of embedded payments, platform revenue, and processor relationships. For ISVs and platforms, interchange changes are not background noise — they are margin events that need to be modeled, monitored, and understood before small fees become real money.

Most ISVs only see the payment API. Underneath it? A pile of ISO8583 voodoo, refund tricks, token traps, and margin games nobody puts in the sales deck. If you don't understand the stack, you don't know where your money is going.