How do I add a surcharge to a sale?

[Tammyfalcon]

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How do I add the fee to the customers bill?

[Codydev]

I would like to have my customers pay for credit card processing. What steps are needed to do this?

[TheRealChipA]

@Codydev Hi, again, neighbor.  I’m attaching a screen shot below from this Square help article on service charges.

A couple of things to note:

1. If you are going to charge surcharges to cover your credit card fees, you have to notify Visa, Mastercard, etc, and get their permission and blessing.
2. Even if you get that from them, you still can not charge fees on debit cards, Afterpay transactions even if they use a credit card, or on pre-paid cards, so you’d have to know how what kind of card they were paying with before adding the charge.

Since you are in Kentucky, you have an easier option.  You can include the fee in your prices.  Then if a customer pays in cash, you can just give them a cash-discount.  Everyone else would pay the regular price.  Just be sure to post a sign conspicuously that you offer cash customers a discount.  That’s really much easier than having to go through the painful process of deciding what kind of card a customer has, and having to eat fees for debit cards, etc.

Does all of that make sense?

[Codydev]

Yes it does thanks for the info!

[BigTyme]

How do i add surcharge to a sale, looking to add surcharge to my sales to help cover the cost of processing fees

[JahvaRob]

I know that there is an option to MANUALLY add a service fee to credit card payments through our Square Register. However, we would have to ask the customer what form of payment they're using, then go manually add it. It's a little much to ask each customer that question.

Many of the other restaurants in my hometown are adding these fees. However, they're full service restaurants where the customer gives the waiter their card and they go to the register and add the fee. It's not as awkward as asking the customer and adding the charge in front of their face.

When is Square going to create a feature that allows us to add a service fee automatically to credit card payments? Not just online.

[_Violet]

Hi @JahvaRob - Thanks for reaching out to us here on the Square Seller Community👋

I went ahead and merged your post to an existing thread where other Square Sellers have discussed this topic as well. We merge duplicate conversations together to keep like comments in one place, and to make it easier for others to find the thread in the future. 

Unfortunately, this is not a feature our Product Team currently has planned. I’ve shared your feature request with our Product Team, as they are constantly improving our products based on feedback like this. To learn more about how feature requests work, please see this post from one of our Seller Community Moderators. 

In the meantime, keep an eye out for any updates in our Seller Community. We appreciate your input! 

[TheRealChipA]

Hi @BigTyme.  Yours is a popular question here in the Community these days.  I’m going to re-direct you a link where I answered this question for another seller, recently.  His question was regarding invoices, but the same general background information along with notes about restrictions for surcharges applies.

Once you have notified Visa/MC, and figured out a way to avoid charging debit cards, prepaid cards and Afterpay transactions the surcharge (since they are never allowed), and once you have ensured that your state allows credit card surcharges (about half of the states don’t allow them, and some states don’t allow my suggest cash discount work-around either), they you can create a surcharge item from your dashboard — go to Account & Settings -> Service Charges to create it.  There are details notes and help there for how to apply them to online sales.

And, I can’t stress enough that there are restrictions, limitations and sometimes ever prohibitions for surcharges.  I just hate to see fellow sellers get into a jackpot.

[_Violet]

Hi @BigTyme - Thanks for reaching out to us here on the Square Seller Community👋

I went ahead and merged your post to the thread that @TheRealChipA mentioned, here. We merge duplicate conversations together to keep like comments in one place, and to make it easier for others to find the thread in the future. 

I hope this information is helpful but please do let me know if you have any additional questions.