seat38a

Its not allowed either based on CA law but the merchants do it anyways. Its legal to give a discount for cash but not for adding a surcharge in CA but merchants do it anyways.

seat38a

Well here is an article from the Telegraph regarding the EU rules and how all it did was cut the perks and consumers are still paying the fees.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal...y25pc-to-spen/

yurtripper

Informative in that they told you you'd be wasting your time?

itsallgood

No, I skimmed the first 4 or 5 of 97 million and there were at least 3 that discussed various workarounds. If one isn't willing to do a Google search though, the likelihood of them following the workaround requirements to any links I'd post is infinitesimally small.

phltraveler

CA Law prohibiting surcharge was found unconstitutional in Jan 2018 and struck down, New York's was found similarly unconstitutional in 2017. 8 other states still have laws on the books about surcharging, and it's likely NY and CA will appeal (NY's case was remanded to a lower court, CA has not exhausted appeals up to SCOTUS; however, the case is similar and the verdict in the NY case was a unanimous 8-0 at the time [unfilled seat]).

That being said Visa's made it kind of obtuse in their rules, at a minimum. You're not allowed to surcharge another card any card with a higher processing rate more than Visa/mastercard (so if Visa and mastercard cost you 2% and Amex/Discover cost you 3-4%, you can only surcharge other credit cards on the whole up to 2%), and you can only surcharge up to your merchant discount rate (average swipe fee across all transactions). You then have to post signage about credit surcharging at the door, and at every point of sale. Then the networks require you to register because if you don't and someone reports it, you broke the rules, and if you do register they watch your surcharge rates and then bust you if your surcharge exceeds your merchant discount.

If you believe a merchant is applying a surcharge against the rules and you feel that's wrong, you can report it to your card issuer (particularly visa/mastercard). The system is against it.

Even if the state laws on surcharging get struck down, the current network rules limiting surcharging to the average discount rate (changes over time, is it confusing if you visit one month and the surcharge is 1.55% and the next month it's 2.16%) and equal among all products (Amex may cost you more to process but you can only surcharge it the same as Visa/Mastercard's lower surcharge) combined with consumer anger/confusion means stores are just more likely to reject it. Although if the retail challenges to the surcharge laws in other states succeed, then I expect that the larger retailers will just start up their legal battle against the networks (Visa/Amex/Mastercard/Discover) again to strike down the rest of the provisions.