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.
Use cash where you can
The easiest way to avoid card surcharges is to pay by cash.
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.
While card surcharging is legally allowed for both debit cards and credit cards, some businesses have chosen to only apply an additional fee to credit transactions. But both MasterCard and Visa debit cards could still attract this cost if they are processed as “credit” transactions on an EFTPOS machine.
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.
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.
You aren't allowed to pass on debit card fees to customers, so you'll have to cover the cost yourself.
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. Can cardholders be surcharged on both credit and debit card transactions? No.
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.
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.
There may be fees for using your debit card. Examples: Some banks charge a fee if you enter a PIN (Personal Identification Number) to conduct a transaction instead of signing your name. You may trigger a fee if you overdraw your account using your debit card, just as you would if you "bounced" a check.
The court issues a judgment, which allows the state to collect unpaid surcharges through involuntary means. The judgment amount (surcharge debt) must be paid before personal property can be transferred or sold. Judgments include a collection cost and interest charges calculated on the judgment balance.
These fees are charged by the bank that issued the debit card. They're meant to cover the costs of processing and handling transactions as well as fraud prevention.
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.
Florida Statute Section 501.0117 prohibits Florida sellers or lessors from imposing "a surcharge on the buyer or lessee for electing to use a credit card in lieu of payment by cash, check or similar means." The statute, however, "does not apply to the offering of a discount for the purpose of inducing payment by cash, ...
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.
How Do You File a Debit Card Chargeback? First, the customer must attempt to resolve the issue with the merchant directly if they haven't already. If the merchant doesn't respond to the customer's attempts to communicate or won't resolve the issue, they can call their bank to dispute the charge.
Consumer Ed says:
A merchant may charge a flat fee called a “convenience fee” to buyers who choose to use an electronic payment method (like a credit or debit card), but only if the merchant also provides a direct payment option by check, cash, or money order where no convenience fee is charged.
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 ...
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.
A surcharge is an additional fee that a merchant adds to the cost of goods or services to offset processing costs. A convenience fee is an additional fee charged for the use of certain payment methods, such as online or phone payments.
Average Debit Card Fees (2025)
The average cost to process a debit card transaction is 0.73% per transaction or $0.34.