(31)It is important to ensure that the provisions concerning the interchange fees to be paid or received by payment service providers are not circumvented by alternative flows of fees to issuers. To avoid this, the ‘net compensation’ of fees paid or received by the issuer, including possible authorisation charges, from or to a payment card scheme, an acquirer or any other intermediary should be considered as the interchange fee. When calculating the interchange fee, for the purpose of checking whether circumvention is taking place the total amount of payments or incentives received by an issuer from a payment card scheme with respect to the regulated transactions less the fees paid by the issuer to the payment card scheme should be taken into account. Payments, incentives and fees considered could be direct (i.e. volume-based or transaction-specific) or indirect (including marketing incentives, bonuses, rebates for meeting certain transaction volumes). In checking whether circumvention of the provisions of this Regulation is taking place, issuers' profits resulting from special programmes carried out jointly by issuers and payment card schemes and revenue from processing, licensing and other fees providing revenue to payment card schemes should, in particular, be taken into account. As appropriate, and if corroborated by further objective elements, the issuance of payment cards in third countries could also be taken into account when assessing potential circumvention of this Regulation.