Surcharge

There are various fees that businesses incur when accepting payments, including interchange fees, fees from payment brands like card schemes and debit network providers, and processing fees. Usually, businesses include the costs for payment-related fees in the prices they charge. But in some countries/regions it is common to pass on these costs as a surcharge when the customer uses a card for payment.

Requirements

Compliance

Surcharges must comply with general requirements. For example, you need to provide signage to inform customers about the payment methods that are subject to surcharges, and the related costs such as the surcharge percentage.

Surcharges must also comply with regional requirements. For example, in the European Economic Area (EEA) surcharges are not allowed on payments made with a consumer card that was issued in the EEA. And in the US surcharges are not allowed on payments made with a debit card.

The Adyen surcharge feature does not enforce compliance. It is your responsibility to apply surcharges correctly.

For more information about requirements, see our Surcharge compliance guide.

How it works

When your shopper proceeds to pay:

1. Collect the shopper's card details on your checkout page.
2. From your server, make a /cardDetails request using the shopper's card details, to get the information that helps to make a decision about the surcharge.
3. Implement logic to decide if a surcharge is allowed, and to calculate the surcharge amount, using the data from the /cardDetails response.
4. Display the surcharge amount on your checkout page.
5. When the shopper proceeds to pay, from your server, make a /payments request that includes the surcharge amount.

Get card details

Use the customer's raw or encrypted card number to make an API request that retrieves the details of the card that helps to determine whether you can apply surcharge to a payment.

1. In your payment form, collect the card number of the customer with either of the following:

   • Custom payment form to collect raw card data
   • Custom Card Component integration to collect encrypted card data

2. From your server, make a /cardDetails request, including:

   Parameter	Required	Description
   cardNumber		If you accept card payments using raw card data, pass this field. Minimum length: first eight digits of the card number. We recommend to pass the full card number for the best result. You must be fully PCI compliant to collect raw card data.
   encryptedCardNumber		If you accept card payments using our Custom Card Component with encrypted card data, pass this field. The encrypted card number you get in the state.data when the Component calls the onSubmit event.
   merchantAccount		The name of your merchant account.

3. In the response, note the following data to:

   • Determine whether a surcharge is applicable for a payment.
   • Calculate the surcharge amount that you can apply.

   Response parameter	Description
   brands.type	The name of the card brand.
   fundingSource	The funding source of the card, for example, DEBIT, CREDIT, or PREPAID.
   isCardCommercial	Indicates if this is a commercial card or a consumer card. When true, it is a commercial card. When false, it is a consumer card.
   issuingCountryCode	The two-letter country code of the country where the card was issued.

4. Use the data from the response to build your logic that determines whether you can apply surcharge on a payment with this card, and calculate the surcharge amount. Refer to our Surcharge compliance guide when determining to which transactions you can apply a surcharge.

Make a payment including the surcharge

After you calculate the surcharge amount, disclose the surcharge amount to your shopper and include the surcharge in your payment request.

1. Make a /payments request with your API only with raw card data integration, or with your API only with encrypted card data integration.
2. In your request include a surcharge object, that specifies the value of the surcharge you apply to the transaction.

3. Calculate the value you need to pass in the amount.value object in your /payments request by adding the surcharge amount to the original transaction amount.

   The /payments response contains:

   • pspReference: Our unique identifier for the transaction.
   • resultCode: Use this to present the payment result to your shopper.
   • merchantReference: The reference from the /payments request.
   • additionalData: Additional information about the transaction. You can optionally enable receiving the surcharge amount in additional data.

Receive the surcharge in additional data

To receive the amount of surcharge you apply to a transaction in the additionalData object of the /payments response, or in the AUTHORISATION webhook:

1. In your Customer Area, go to Developers > Additional data.
2. Select Surcharge amount.
3. Select Save configuration.

Reporting

To have full visibility of the surcharge amounts that were added to payments, we strongly recommend you add an extra column Surcharge Amount to the following reports:

• Payment Accounting Report (PAR)
• Settlement Detail Report (SDR)

Test and go live

Before going live with your integration, use our test card numbers to test that you make a successful payment that includes a surcharge.

See also

• API only integration guide
• Surcharge compliance guide
• Surcharge with in-person payments