A credit card surcharge is a fee that you can add to a customer's order when they pay with a credit card. You use this fee to offset the processing cost of accepting credit card payments. The surcharge can't be higher than your actual credit card processing rate or greater than 3%.

We offer RewardPay Choice, a credit card surcharge program that lets you adjust surcharge rate that you pass on to your customers, for example, if your processing fee is 3%, you can set the surcharge rate to 2%, which means you only pay 1% for the processing fee.

To sign up to RewardPay Choice, contact your Sales Team, call us at (888) 477-4500, or email cs@payroc.com.

How it works

After you enable surcharges, we add a surcharge to all credit card payments. Each day, we withhold the surcharge from the funds we deposit into your account. At the end of the month, we credit the surcharge to your account to reduce your monthly processing fees.

The following worked example shows how surcharges affect your daily settlements and monthly processing fees:

If you set a surcharge rate of 2%, we add a $2 surcharge to a $100 credit card payment. The customer pays $102, and we withhold $2 from your deposit. At the end of the month, we apply the $2 credit to your account to reduce your processing fees.

Surcharge guidelines

Refer to the following guidelines for things you should consider before you enable surcharges and things you must do to comply with surcharge requirements.

Things you should consider before you enable surcharges

• Check your state eligibility - Confirm whether your state allows surcharges. Some states, such as Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maine, prohibit surcharges, and some states limit how much surcharge you can apply.
• Review American Express requirements - If you participate in the Amex Direct program, you can't apply surcharges.

Things you must do to comply with surcharge requirements

• Follow the surcharge rules for your transaction type - For in-person payments, apply surcharge rules based on your business location. For mail, phone, and online payments, apply the surcharge rules based on the cardholder's billing state.
• Display surcharge disclosures - Display your surcharge rate clearly at all customer touchpoints.
  • Point of entry - At the store entrance or website landing page, add signage, such as:
    • We impose a surcharge of _% when paying with a credit card, which is not greater than our cost of acceptance. The adjustment will appear on your receipt. We do not surcharge debit cards. Any purchases made with a debit card or cash will not include a surcharge.
  • Point of sale - On the payment device screen or checkout page, add a disclosure, for example:
    • We impose a surcharge of _% when paying with a credit card, which is not greater than our cost of acceptance. The adjustment will appear on your receipt. We do not surcharge debit cards. Any purchases made with a debit card or cash will not include a surcharge.
  • Receipts - Add the surcharge amount as a separate line item on receipts.
• Refund the surcharge - If you refund a credit card transaction, you must also refund the surcharge.
• Apply the same surcharge rate across all merchant IDs (MIDs) at the same location - If you have multiple MIDs at one location, apply the same surcharge rate.