Yes. U.S. merchants that surcharge must disclose the surcharge dollar amount on every receipt.
You may accomplish this by including the credit card surcharge on your invoice or displaying a sign at your office. If you're using an online payment solution, this notice should be automatically included on your payment page.
Cardholders are required to be notified in advance if a merchant will impose a surcharge. Merchants must also include the surcharge fee on all receipts. Surcharges are allowable up to 4%. The limits vary by brand and by merchant discount rate.
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.
There is no prohibition for credit card surcharges and no statute on discounts for different payment methods. Merchants can impose a surcharge as long as it doesn't exceed the cost of the merchant's processing fee. Merchants may offer discounts for payment by cash, check or other methods unrelated to credit cards.
As of September 2024, most states allow merchants to add a surcharge when customers pay with a credit card. This means businesses can pass along the cost of processing credit card transactions directly to the customer.
Credit card surcharges are generally permissible in the United States. These surcharges are added to credit card transactions to cover processing fees. The surcharge amount is typically a percentage of the transaction. Businesses must inform customers about the surcharge before the transaction.
Use cash where you can
The easiest way to avoid card surcharges is to pay by cash. While businesses can charge a surcharge for paying by debit or credit cards, they can't charge a surcharge for paying by cash.
A surcharge is an additional fee that a business imposes on a customer when they use a credit card for payment. This fee helps cover the costs associated with processing credit card transactions (such as merchant fees or payment gateway charges) by passing them down to the consumer.
A surcharge is not a convenience fee. A convenience fee is levied by a merchant for offering customers the privilege of paying with an alternative non-standard payment method. Merchants can process convenience fees in all 50 states. A surcharge is levied by a merchant for customer purchases made with a credit card.
In 1985, California passed a law (Civil Code section 1748.1) that prohibited merchants from adding a surcharge (an extra fee) when customers pay by credit card instead of cash.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Releases Final Rule on Credit Card Late Fees, with Overdraft Fees on Deck. On March 5, 2024, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Bureau) announced the final rule governing late fees for consumer credit card payments, likely cutting the average fee from $32 to just $8.
Most credit card companies require merchants to disclose credit card surcharges in online transactions, on a sign at the store's point of entry and point of sale, and on the receipt.
As of January 2023, only two states and one jurisdiction still outlaw the use of credit card surcharges. They are a result of non-qualified transactions of different communications methods.: Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Puerto Rico.
Surcharges are legal unless restricted by state law. Where permitted, merchants must clearly disclose that there is a surcharge before a transaction and display it as a separate line item on the payment confirmation. There are also limits to the amount that you can surcharge. (More on that below.)
There are a few ways of legally passing on credit card fees to customers. Some are direct, and some are indirect. Adding a surcharge to cover the credit card fee is the more direct method while incentivizing cash payments is indirect.
Swiping or Inserting Your Card Could Lower Surcharges
Although businesses can still apply a surcharge for EFTPOS payments, it is generally lower than for other card types. Some bank cards can also use EFTPOS when tapped, avoiding the more expensive Visa/Mastercard networks.
We impose a surcharge of ____________% on the transaction amount on Visa credit card products, which is not greater than our cost of acceptance. We do not surcharge Visa debit cards.
Use a different payment method.
Merchants often charge convenience fees or surcharges when credit cards aren't a standard payment method. If you have a rent, utility or tax bill, consider paying by check or electronic transfer instead.
How does a surcharge work? You can set up a card surcharge to be manual or automatic. For manual, you add the surcharge during the sale. For automatic, you set it up from your dashboard to automatically apply to each card sale you make.
A credit card surcharge fee is an additional charge imposed by businesses when customers choose to pay with a credit card. It aims to offset the transaction fees incurred by merchants from credit card companies, potentially affecting the total cost of purchases.
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 No-Surcharge Rule (NSR). The NSR means that a merchant charges at most the same amount for a payment card1 transaction as for cash. If the merchant decides to apply a discount for payments in cash that discount cannot be extended to any specific card brand.
What are TLVs? TLVs are the maximum average airborne concentration of a hazardous material to which healthy adult workers can be exposed during an 8-hour workday and 40-hour workweek—over a working lifetime—without experiencing significant adverse health effects.