“Amazon has begun informing Australian customers that it would prefer they do not use a Visa card when buying things through its platform. From November 1, Amazon will apply a 0.5% surcharge to purchases made using Visa credit cards on Amazon.com.au. According to Amazon, costs for transactions should be going down, not up.”

“There are only four states and one territory — Colorado, Kansas, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Puerto Rico — that explicitly make it illegal to impose an extra fee for using a credit card. Visa requires all businesses that impose a card surcharge to give consumers written notice of it at least 30 days in advance. All of the card networks cap surcharges at 4% of the transaction — meaning that merchants can’t use surcharges for profit. Instead, they can only recoup baseline costs.”

“With Colorado Governor Jared Polis signing Senate Bill 21-091, repealing the state’s ban on credit card surcharging, Colorado has a surcharging law that not only ensures proper disclosure about surcharges to consumers, but mirrors the surcharging rules implemented by Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. The new law, signed by Polis on Thursday, caps surcharges at either 2% of the transaction amount or the merchant’s actual cost of the transactions, mandates disclosure of the surcharge amount to consumers prior to the transaction, and prohibits surcharges on debit cards.”

“Surcharges on credit card transactions could pick up momentum now that only four states effectively ban the practice, a panel of experts indicated Wednesday at a merchant-acquiring trade show. That momentum may benefit not only merchants wary of card-acceptance costs but also merchant-service providers that focus on surcharging as a business opportunity, the panel indicated. Even recent publicity about litigation over the matter has lent impetus to programs offered by some independent sales organizations and other merchant-service providers that have chosen to focus on the matter.”

“At Kiraku, a busy izakaya in Berkeley, dinner might come with a surcharge that you won’t see at many Bay Area restaurants. Notices can be found at the entrance, by the cash register, on the menu and on a little card that comes at the end of the meal. The culprit for a higher bill? Using a credit card. Kiraku is one of the first restaurants in the Bay Area to charge diners an extra fee for paying with plastic.”

“They’ve been the subject of intense debate for several years now, but evidence from the Southeast Acquirers Association annual conference Tuesday shows interest among independent sales organizations in discounts for cash and credit card surcharges is as high as ever. About 800 people attended the Atlanta confab that concluded Wednesday, and most of them crowded into a panel session Tuesday to learn more about services that offer merchants a way to reduce payment card acceptance costs while increasing ISO profitability. While both pricing plans have their share of critics, discounts for cash have been especially controversial since Visa Inc. issued a bulletin last October that in essence told the merchant-acquiring community that many such programs are really improperly disclosed surcharges imposed on card-using customers.”

“SurchX is solving one of retail’s biggest challenges – staying profitable in an increasingly commoditized world. With the world’s first interchange fee recovery platform, SurchX’s API uses sophisticated algorithms that enable retailers to securely pass merchants’ fees for credit card transactions onto the customer, while staying compliant with 67 regulatory bodies in the United States.”