Surcharging Rules
1) Surcharge may be up to 4% but may not exceed the actual cost of processing a transaction.
If the cost to accept a competitor brand card like Amex is higher the merchant may use this higher cost to base their fee as long as the total surcharge does not exceed 4%.
2) Must post a disclosure at the point of sale that a surcharge is being charged but does not have to list the exact amount of the surcharge. The disclosure may read as follows: “We impose a surcharge of ____% on the total transaction amount of Visa, MC, Amex & Discover credit card products, which is not greater than our cost of acceptance. We do not surcharge any pin or signature debit cards.”
3) The exact amount of the surcharge must be listed on the customer receipt.
4) Signature check cards and pin debit cards are excluded from surcharging.
5) 10 states currently prohibit surcharging; California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Oklahoma and Texas. Visa and MC have rules the require retailers to handle cards the same way in all of their stores across the country. That means a retailer with stores in any of these 10 states would not be able to surcharge in their other locations in states that may allow surcharging.
6) Must surcharge across all card types. Cannot just select Visa and/or MC to surcharge.
7) Retailer must register with Visa
www.visavisa.com/merchantsurcharging and with MC via the Acquirer to disclose their intent to surcharge.
8) Due to all of the front and backend system upgrades that will need to be made to accommodate these updates, it is expected that it will be late 2013 before merchants will be able to implement this.