A surcharge is an additional charge to recover the transaction costs from your customers. The Payment Service Directive 2 (PSD2), which entered into force on 13 January 2018, introduces a surcharge ban for most B2C transactions.
The directive mentions the following:
- Surcharging isn’t permitted for consumer payments made with most debit and credit cards. In addition, surcharging isn’t permitted when payments are made using standard credit transfer or SEPA Direct Debit.
- In the instances that surcharging is permitted, the amount of the surcharge can never be higher than the actual costs incurred by the merchant in accepting the payment method.
Even though these are European rules, interpretation and therefore the scope of the ban can differ between the different countries. E.g. PSD2 says that surcharging is no longer permitted for consumer payments made using debit and credit cards. However, for some payment methods it’s not clear whether they’re based on a debit or credit card. For these cases, countries are free to decide what’s permitted and what’s not. Mollie keeps a close eye on possible developments on this topic.
What can I do?
You can decide whether you want to charge your customers for the costs you incur on accepting the payment method. However, it depends on your webshop system if surcharging is possible. In the end, you will always have the responsibility to comply with (local) law.
For more information, check out the European Central Bank website.