Surcharge

Payment brands, such as card schemes and debit network providers, charge a fee for accepting payments on their payment network. Usually, businesses include the costs for payment 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 makes a payment.

Requirements

Before you begin, take into account the following requirements, limitations, and preparations.

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 use the correct settings when you configure surcharges.

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

Pilot in CA, EU, and US

Adyen is running a pilot to extend support for the surcharge feature to Canada, Europe, and the United States. Our systems, including Management API, enable you to configure surcharges specifically for these regions.

The pilot is open for more businesses. If you are interested in joining the pilot, contact your Adyen account manager.

How it works

After the surcharge amounts and/or percentages are configured:

1. You make a payment request like you normally do. There are no special parameters required to trigger the surcharge.

2. The terminal or mobile device shows a screen with the purchase amount and instructs the customer to present their card.

3. Based on the card that the customer presents, the terminal or Mobile SDK calculates the surcharge using the surcharge amounts and/or percentages you configured.

4. If configured, a confirmation screen appears with the total amount of the payment, the surcharge amount, and the card scheme that the extra fee is charged for.

   In a Tap to Pay integration, the mobile device does not show a confirmation screen. The surcharge is applied automatically.

   

5. On the terminal or mobile device, the customer selects the Confirm key to accept, and the payment is processed. The payment response shows the surcharge amount in the TotalFeesAmount field.

   If the customer doesn't accept the surcharge and selects the Cancel key, the whole transaction is cancelled.

Skipping the confirmation screen

It takes a bit of time for the customer to review the confirmation screen with the surcharge details. To avoid this delay in the payment flow, you can configure a setting to hide this screen. For Tap to Pay transactions that include surcharges, the confirmation screen doesn't show.

The flow will then be:

1. You make a payment request like you normally do.
2. The customer completes the payment.
3. Based on the card that the customer presents, the terminal calculates the surcharge and adds it to the payment amount during the authorization.

Configure surcharges

The payment acceptance fee that you pay depends on the payment method brand (scheme), funding source (credit or debit), currency, and the country/region that issued the payment method (domestic or international). Therefore, the surcharge that you pass on to the customer must be specific for the combination of brand, funding source, currency, and country/region.

The surcharge can be a fixed amount for each transaction, a percentage of the sum of the purchase amount and the tip, or both a fixed amount and a percentage.

In addition, you can specify a maximum surcharge amount, and indicate if the surcharge should only be applied if the payment method is a commercial/business card. This is important in countries/regions where surcharges on consumer cards are not allowed.

To configure surcharges:

1. Check the current surcharge configuration (if any) by making a GET request to the /terminalSettings endpoint for the company account, merchant account, store or terminal, and checking the surcharge object.

2. Create an overview of all surcharges that you want to apply. For example:

   Brand	Only commercial cards	Funding source	Country/ region	Currency	Percentage	Amount	Max. amount
   eftpos	false	Debit		AUD	(none)	AUD 0.10	(none)
   Mastercard	false	Credit		AUD	0.58 %	AUD 1	(none)
   Mastercard	false	Debit		AUD	0.58 %	(none)	AUD 10
   Visa	false	Credit or Debit	AU, NZ	AUD	0.63 %	(none)	(none)
   Visa	false	Credit or Debit		AUD	1.63 %	(none	(none)
   Visa	true	Credit or Debit	NL	EUR	1.63 %	(none)	(none)

   Specifying a country/region applies the surcharge settings only to payment methods issued in that country/region. If not specified, the surcharge applies to all payment methods that meet the rest of the conditions.

3. Make a PATCH request to the /terminalSettings endpoint for the company account, merchant account, store or terminal.
   In the request body, specify a surcharge object with the following properties:

   Parameter	Data type	Description
   askConfirmation	Boolean	Indicates whether to show (true) or hide (false) the surcharge confirmation screen on the payment terminal.
   configurations	Array[Object]	Array of payment methods for which to apply surcharges. Each payment method is an array item that includes details about how to apply the surcharge. The order of array items inside the configurations array impacts the order of execution. The condition that is met first is executed without checking the rest of the configuration.

   For each array item in the configurations object, specify:

   Parameter	Required	Description
   brand		A payment method supported for Management API, for example eftpos_australia or mc.
   currencies		An object with: currencyCode: (required) the three-character ISO currency code. percentage: surcharge percentage per transaction up to two decimal places. For example, 1% or 2.27%. amount: surcharge amount per transaction, in minor units. maxAmount: the maximum surcharge amount per transaction, in minor units. This object must contain the currencyCode and a percentage or an amount (or both).
   sources		Can be: Credit or Debit. If not specified, the currencies settings apply to all possible funding sources for the brand.
   country		The country/region of the issuer. If used, the surcharge settings only apply if the payment method was issued in that country/region.
   commercial		Set to true to indicate that the surcharge should be applied only in case of a commercial/business card. If not specified, the default value false is used. This setting is important in countries/regions where a surcharge is not allowed for consumer cards. This check is not supported on mobile devices used in a Mobile solution. On payment terminals this check is not supported when the internet connection is down.

   Configure surcharges

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   curl https://management-test.adyen.com/v3/stores/{storeId}/terminalSettings \
   -H 'x-API-key: YOUR_X-API-KEY' \
   -X PATCH \
   -d '{
       "surcharge":{
           "askConfirmation":true,
           "configurations":[
               {
                   "brand":"mc",
                   "sources":[
                       "Credit"
                   ],
                   "currencies":[
                       {
                           "currencyCode":"AUD",
                           "percentage":"0.58",
                           "amount":"100"
                       }
                   ]
               },
               {
                   "brand":"mc",
                   "sources":[
                       "Debit"
                   ],
                   "currencies":[
                       {
                           "currencyCode":"AUD",
                           "percentage":"0.58",
                           "maxAmount":"10000"
                       }
                   ]
               },
               {
                   "brand":"eftpos",
                   "sources":[
                      "Debit"
                   ],
                   "currencies":[
                       {
                           "currencyCode":"AUD",
                           "amount":"10"
                       }
                   ]
               },
               {
                   "brand":"visa",
                   "sources":[
                       "Credit",
                       "Debit"
                   ],
                   "currencies":[
                       {
                           "currencyCode":"AUD",
                           "percentage":"0.63"
                       }
                   ],
                   "country":[
                       "AU", "NZ"
                   ]
               },
               {
                   "brand":"visa",
                   "sources":[
                       "Credit",
                       "Debit"
                   ],
                   "currencies":[
                       {
                           "currencyCode":"AUD",
                           "percentage":"1.63"
                       }
                   ]
               },
               {
                   "brand":"visa",
                   "sources":[
                       "Credit",
                       "Debit"
                   ],
                   "currencies":[
                       {
                           "currencyCode":"EUR",
                           "percentage":"1.63"
                       }
                   ],
                   "country":[
                       "NL"
                   ],
                   "commercial":true
               }
           ]
       }
   }'

   The response returns the surcharge settings as well as all other terminal settings at the level where you made the request.

4. (Optional) Ask our Support Team to configure single tap. When this feature is enabled, the customer doesn't need to present their contactless card again after the terminal has calculated the total amount.

   When accepting payments with surcharges using Tap to Pay on a mobile device, only single tap flow is available. Ask our Support Team to configure single tap.

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)

If you need help

If you cannot use Management API to configure the surcharge feature yourself:

1. Make an overview of surcharges as described under Configure surcharges.
2. Contact our Support Team and ask them to:
   • Configure the surcharge feature according to your overview.
   • Enable or disable skipping the confirmation screen.
   • (Optional) Configure single tap.

See also