Accepting Bcard as a merchant
Bcard is the Bulgarian national card scheme. Its rules are adopted by a Council of Participants of banks, payment institutions and e-money companies, and its website is published by BORICA AD. It started its activity at the end of 2016 and builds on the earlier national card Borica. It is issued as a debit, credit or prepaid card, to individuals and to companies, and the scheme states that it is accepted at all terminal devices in the country. For a merchant the interesting part is not the card. It is that a Bulgarian acquirer can print Bcard on the same tariff line as Visa and Mastercard, list interchange and a scheme fee beside it, and leave open how those components relate to the fee you pay.
Published prices for bcardPer provider, country and channel, further down this pageGo to the pricesHow to accept Bcard as a merchant
Bcard is contracted through a Bulgarian PSP or bank, never with the scheme. BORICA states that all payment service providers on the Bulgarian market that offer card payment services also acquire Bcard, and it refers merchants to the bank that manages their business account and POS terminal for commissions, restrictions and brand recognition.
Online, the card is accepted on Bulgarian websites that show the bcard or Borica logo. In practice that means a Bulgarian acquirer or gateway, such as ePay.bg for e-commerce or a Bulgarian bank for both channels.
Rail
Bcard is a domestic card scheme with its own interchange
A Bcard payment runs through the scheme between the merchant's acquirer and the cardholder's issuer. The card is issued with chip technology and carries no magnetic stripe data, and the scheme lists contactless payment, payment on the internet and mobile payments among its features.
Bcard has its own interchange. ePay.bg prints it in its merchant tariff: 0.3% for a credit card, 0.2% for a debit and prepaid card. Those are the same levels the same tariff prints for personal Visa and Mastercard cards issued in the EEA. Disputes follow the card route: BORICA tells the cardholder to contact the institution that issued the card.
Where Bcard is used, and where it is sold
Bcard is a Bulgarian product. BORICA states that over 70,000 commercial facilities in the country accept it, with more than 85,000 POS terminals, and that international acceptance is planned. Bulgaria joined the euro area on 1 January 2026, so tariffs such as ePay.bg's are now printed in euro.
For a merchant outside Bulgaria the useful question is not how many Bulgarians hold a Bcard but whether your own acquirer can route one. BORICA states that every PSP on the Bulgarian market that offers card payment services also acquires Bcard.
Pricing
ePay.bg prices Bcard on the same line as Visa and Mastercard
BORICA publishes no merchant price. The published price in the index comes from ePay.bg: 1% of each payment with a debit, credit or prepaid card issued in Bulgaria, Bcard included, with a minimum of 0.10 euro. The 3D terminal for ePay World carries an annual fee of 81.81 euro, with the first year charged at 7.16 euro per remaining month.
On a 40 euro order 1% is 0.40 euro. On a 6 euro order 1% would be 0.06 euro, so the minimum applies and the fee is 0.10 euro. On 500,000 euro of annual card volume at an average order of 40 euro, 12,500 payments at 0.40 euro come to 5,000 euro, plus the terminal fee of 81.81 euro.
These are published list prices and the example is illustrative: the quoted rate decides what you actually pay. Because ePay.bg puts Bcard, Visa and Mastercard issued in Bulgaria on one line, the brand of the card makes no difference to the fee in this tariff.
Vouchers
Food vouchers run on Bcard with an interchange of their own
Since 1 October 2023 the Council of Participants of the scheme has adopted rules for food vouchers on an electronic holder with the Bcard card, together with an interbank exchange fee of 0.3% of the payment amount. That fee is paid by the merchant's bank to the bank serving the food voucher operator.
A voucher payment arrives on the same terminal under the same logo, but it is a different product. Its interchange is 0.3%, where a Bcard debit payment carries 0.2%. On 100,000 euro of voucher payments that is 300 euro of interchange against 200 euro at the debit level. Ask your acquirer to report voucher volume as a separate line, so it is not priced as card volume and its 0.3% can be checked separately.
Contract
Fix in writing whether interchange and scheme fee sit inside the 1%
The ePay.bg tariff prints three things beside each other: the operator's fee of 1% for cards issued in Bulgaria, the Bcard interchange of 0.2% and 0.3%, and a scheme fee of 0.35% for all card transactions with cards issued by payment service providers in the EU and EEA, as at the date of the contract. The tariff does not state whether the interchange and the scheme fee are contained in the 1% or charged on top, and the scheme fee line does not name Bcard.
Those are two open points with a direct cost. If the 0.35% applied on top of the 1% to a 40 euro Bcard payment, the fee would rise from 0.40 to 0.54 euro. Agree in writing that the 1% is the full price per payment, and which scheme fee, if any, applies to Bcard.
Bcard reaches you only through an acquirer active in Bulgaria
The scheme publishes its own list of acquirers of Bcard cards, among them UniCredit Bulbank, DSK Bank and Paynetics, and BORICA states that Bcard will be accepted abroad soon, not that it is. A merchant that sells into Bulgaria from another country through a non-Bulgarian acquirer should not assume that a Bcard-only card can be accepted at its checkout.
Ask your PSP which Bcard products it routes, and check your decline data for Bulgarian cards before you decide whether a Bulgarian acquiring route is worth adding.
Which payment providers support Bcard
In the index, ePay.bg, Fibank, OTP Bank, Postbank (Eurobank Bulgaria) and UniCredit offer Bcard to merchants established in Bulgaria. BORICA states that every payment service provider on the Bulgarian market that offers card payment services also acquires Bcard.
The questions to put to each are the same: whether Bcard is priced on the same line as Visa and Mastercard, whether interchange and scheme fee are inside the quoted rate, how food voucher payments are reported, and which minimum fee and terminal fee apply.
Retail Payment Methods Transparency Index
Published prices for bcard, per provider
5 providers in the index offer bcard to merchants established in Europe, and one of them publishes a price.
Each rate is shown as the provider prints it, and the provider's name links to the page it was read on. A published rate is a list rate: what a merchant actually pays is stated in the quoted rate and the contract.
The country where your business is established and from which you sell. Shoppers pay with bcard in: Bulgaria.
| Provider | Per transaction | Channel |
|---|---|---|
| ePay.bg Merchants in Bulgaria | Bcard debit, credit or prepaid card issued by a bank in Bulgaria (3D terminal, ePay World): 1% (minimum €0.10); Bcard interchange: credit card 0.30%, debit and prepaid card 0.20%; scheme fee for all card transactions with cards issued by payment service providers in the EU and EEA: 0.35% (as at the date of the contract); annual fee for opening and maintaining the 3D terminal (ePay World): €81.81 (first year: €7.16 per month for the months remaining in the calendar year)Percentage, with minimum, plus subscription | Online |
| Fibank Merchants in Bulgaria | No price published | In-store |
| OTP Bank Merchants in Bulgaria | DSK Bank: No price published | Online |
| OTP Bank Merchants in Bulgaria | DSK Bank: No price published | In-store |
| Postbank (Eurobank Bulgaria) Merchants in Bulgaria | No price published | In-store |
| UniCredit Merchants in Bulgaria | No price published | In-store |
Source: EcomStream, Retail Payment Methods Transparency Index, ecomstream.eu/payment-methods-transparency-index. Read at source between 28 September 2026 and 12 October 2026. A provider that believes a row is wrong can write to index@ecomstream.nl. Every reported correction is checked at the source.
Reviewing what Bcard costs you
What you pay for Bcard is set in your agreement with your PSP or bank, not by the scheme. Start by establishing whether you are overpaying your PSP, and where Bulgarian card volume is material, have the components of the tariff confirmed in writing before you renew.
Relevant markets: Bulgaria
Payment set-up check
Selling to shoppers in Bulgaria? Let's check what Bcard actually costs you.
Enter your webshop. The check sets your checkout against what shoppers in each of your markets expect, and names the gaps. If you want, it then calculates what those gaps cost you in euros.
Ramon Helwegen
