{"id":3843,"date":"2024-12-19T15:13:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-19T20:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/?p=3843"},"modified":"2025-01-23T12:41:06","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T17:41:06","slug":"surcharges-convenience-fees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/surcharges-convenience-fees\/","title":{"rendered":"Surcharges and Convenience Fees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Surcharges and Convenience Fees:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A surcharge is a fee<\/strong> that is added to a card transaction, either as a set amount or a percentage of a transaction. Typically, used to cover the cost of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\">merchant account<\/a> charges.<\/p>\n<p>There are rules, exceptions and state laws to observe to ensure you are compliant.<\/p>\n<p><strong>At present there are surcharge bans in the following states:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>California, Colorado,\u00a0Connecticut,\u00a0Florida,\u00a0Kansas,\u00a0Maine,\u00a0Massachusetts,\u00a0New York,\u00a0Oklahoma and\u00a0Texas. <em><strong>(Appeals are pending for California and Florida)\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Surcharge Rules:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Applicable only to credit card transactions, not debit or prepaid card transactions.<\/li>\n<li>The surcharge cannot be greater than the merchant\u2019s average discount rate for that brand\u2019s credit card transactions.<\/li>\n<li>Maximum surcharge allowed is 4%.<\/li>\n<li>Cardholder must be notified of the surcharge.<\/li>\n<li>Surcharge must be listed on the receipt as a line item and the primary payment amount must be processed together as one transaction.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>A convenience fee<\/strong> <strong>is a fee<\/strong> charged for the <strong>\u201cconvenience\u201d<\/strong> <strong>of being able to pay using an alternative payment channel<\/strong> outside the merchant\u2019s customary payment channel.<\/p>\n<p>Any merchant can charge a convenience fee <strong>IF<\/strong> the fee charged is for the <strong>legitimate convenience <\/strong>of being able to pay using a different payment channel than the merchant\u2019s usual payment channel.<\/p>\n<p>Example: Your business customary payment channel is face-to-face or card present and you provide an alternative payment channel, such as the option to pay by phone using a credit card, that could then charge a convenience fee along with the payment.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Mail Order\/Telephone Order (MOTO) merchants and ecommerce merchants, whose customary payment channel is exclusively non face-to-face or card-not-present, are NOT permitted to charge convenience fees.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Convenience Fee Rules:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Customer must be notified of the convenience fee prior to finalizing payment and given the opportunity to cancel.<\/li>\n<li>Payment must take place through an alternative payment channel.<\/li>\n<li>The fee can only be added to a non face-to-face transaction. Must be flat or fixed, regardless of the value of the payment due.<\/li>\n<li>The fee must be applied to all means of payment accepted through the alternative payment channel. Must be included in the total transaction amount.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Surcharges and Convenience Fees: A surcharge is a fee that is added to a card transaction, either as a set<\/p>\n<div id=\"more-button\"><a class=\"btn btn-more excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/surcharges-convenience-fees\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,264,449],"tags":[412,2981,21,347,683,84,451,27,1941,2980,212],"class_list":["post-3843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-best-practices-for-merchants","category-e-commerce-m-commerce","category-mail-order-telephone-order","tag-card-not-present","tag-convenience-fees","tag-credit-card-2","tag-debit","tag-ecommerce","tag-merchant","tag-moto","tag-payment","tag-prepaid-card","tag-surcharges","tag-transaction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3843"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5159,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3843\/revisions\/5159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}