B2B Surcharging: Passing Credit-Card Fees to Customers

What Surcharging Actually Is

• A surcharge is an added fee that offsets the interchange cost of accepting a credit card, applied only when the customer chooses to pay by card.
• It differs from a convenience fee, which applies to an alternative payment channel, and from a service fee applied to every transaction regardless of method.
• Card network rules cap the surcharge at the actual cost of acceptance, commonly around 3%, and never more than 4% in most programs.
• Debit cards and prepaid cards generally cannot be surcharged, so your billing logic must detect card type before applying any fee.