No, surcharging for debit card transactions is prohibited under the Durbin Amendment of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. This applies to all types of debit cards, including prepaid cards.
No. The ability to surcharge only applies to credit card purchases, and only under certain conditions. U.S. merchants cannot surcharge debit card or prepaid card purchases.
Surcharging is widely accepted in the US except in Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Puerto Rico. Illinois, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Texas, Nevada, New York, South Dakota, New Jersey, Minnesota, California, Florida, Oklahoma, Michigan, and Montana allow surcharging with certain contingencies.
Use cash where you can
The easiest way to avoid card surcharges is to pay by cash.
The Board's Regulation II provides that an issuer subject to the interchange fee standard (a covered issuer) may not receive, for any electronic debit transaction, an interchange fee that exceeds $0.21 plus 0.05 percent multiplied by the value of the transaction, plus a $0.01 fraud-prevention adjustment, if eligible.
What the regular consumer may not know is that all credit and debit card transactions come with a charge to the business they're buying from. The exact amount this charge will cost varies depending on a number of different factors, which we'll explore in this blog*.
Surcharge fees are strictly limited to credit card transactions only. Even if a client wishes to run a signature debit transaction, where a debit card is processed as a credit transaction, you are still not allowed to implement a surcharge. Surcharges are also not applicable to prepaid cards.
Under federal law, you have protections that help limit what you have to pay if your credit, ATM, or debit cards are lost or stolen. If someone uses your ATM or debit card before you report it lost or stolen, what you owe depends on how quickly you report it.
To report merchants charging excessive payment card surcharges, or surcharging debit and prepaid card transactions, consumers may visit www.visa.com or www.mastercard.com to fill out a Merchant Violation Form.
By law, merchants cannot levy a surcharge on purchases made with debit or prepaid cards, with a few exceptions. When Visa bought the payment processing company Interlink, it agreed to let Arco and a handful of other gas stations continue assessing this fee.
Average Debit Card Fees (2025)
The average cost to process a debit card transaction is 0.73% per transaction or $0.34.
A section of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act known as the Durbin Amendment requires the Board to establish standards for assessing whether the amount of any interchange fee received by a debit card issuer is reasonable and proportional to the cost incurred by the issuer with respect to the ...
You aren't allowed to pass on debit card fees to customers, so you'll have to cover the cost yourself.
While large banks that issue debit cards are not allowed to charge more than . 05% + $. 21, credit card rates can range up to over 3.5% per transaction.
Penal Code 484g PC makes it a crime to fraudulently use another person's credit or debit card.
The new regulations cap certain fees and give merchants more control in routing debit card transactions and in steering customers toward the payment methods that merchants prefer. Merchants and the payment card industry took opposing sides in the controversy over fees.
In most cases, federal law limits your liability for unauthorized debit card purchases to $50, provided you report the fraud within two business days of discovering it.
Is Debit Card Surcharging Legal? For debit cards and prepaid cards, surcharging is prohibited—even when the card is run as a signature-based transaction without the PIN. This restriction was implemented by the Durbin Amendment of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
As of the time of writing, surcharging is legal in all but four states (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, and New York*) and Puerto Rico. Note: Surcharges are governed by state law and card brand rules (like those published by Visa and Mastercard), each of which are subject to change.
U.S. merchants have the option to add a surcharge at the “brand level” to all transactions on Visa credit cards, or to transactions on particular types of Visa credit cards at the “product level” (e.g. Visa Traditional, Visa Traditional Rewards, Visa Signature) but not both.
The simplest way to avoid card surcharges? Pay cash. While businesses can charge a surcharge for paying with a credit, debit or prepaid card, they can't charge you more than the advertised price if you're paying in cash.
Yes. Debit card processing fees involve interchange fees, which vary by card and bank, and payment processing fees, which vary by provider.
Banks levy various types of debit card charges. Standard charges include debit card transaction charges, annual charges, reissuance charges, etc. Charges may depend on the average balances in your account.