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When a merchant (your business) takes payment via credit card, that merchant may choose to add a fee to the invoice in order to cover the merchant’s cost for processing the transaction. This might take the form of a flat fee or a percentage of the invoice total.
Some states and United States Territories have prohibited merchants from charging a surcharge such as this, and some credit card networks have specific rules detailing the maximum amount a customer can be charged by a merchant for a given transaction. The type of card used by the customer may also have varying rules on whether or not a credit card surcharge can be imposed by the merchant.
We encourage you to learn more about credit card surcharges by checking state and local laws regarding the use, presentation, and conditions of imposing a credit card surcharge on your customers. We at Smart Service Cloud would also like to provide the following FAQs from Visa and MasterCard regarding their stance on credit card surcharges.
Smart Service Cloud is sold and used in the United States, U.S. territories, and Canada. We have partnered with CardPointe to provide our customers with an integrated merchant service to receive payments via credit card, ACH, check, and more.
We at Smart Service Cloud have carefully considered the requests from some of our customers to implement such a feature and we thank you for your feedback! Coming up with a suitable solution for merchants wishing to impose a credit card surcharge while satisfying our current obligations and restrictions has been a long-debated topic for our team.
With the wide variety of laws in our coverage area, our partnership with CardPointe, and the regulations depending on the various types of cards issued, we are not able to create a feature to assist with credit card surcharges at this time.
Consider raising prices to offset the cost of your business taking payment via credit card. You may wish to investigate how other businesses in your area have increased their pricing to accommodate credit card processing fees.
Revise your terms and conditions to implement a minimum purchase requirement for customers wishing to pay via credit card. This is another common strategy small businesses implement to avoid credit card processing fees on smaller purchases.
A business might also consider offering a cash discount for invoices of a certain dollar value to encourage your customer to cover the transaction with cash rather than by credit card.