Point-of-sale icon

Surcharge

Pass on the scheme fee to customers as a surcharge to their payments.

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 it is common to pass on these costs as a surcharge when the customer makes a payment.

This feature is currently only available in Australia and New Zealand.

How it works

To apply payment surcharges, you first have to configure the surcharge amounts and/or percentages.

After the surcharges are configured:

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

  2. The payment terminal shows the purchase amount and prompts the customer to present their card.

  3. Based on the card that the customer presents, the terminal calculates the surcharge using the surcharge logic you configured.

  4. The terminal shows a confirmation screen with the total amount of the payment (sum of the purchase amount, tip, and surcharge), the surcharge amount, and the card scheme that the extra fee is charged for.

  5. 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.

Be aware that regulations require you to inform the customer that a surcharge will be added to the payment amount.

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 that issued the payment method (domestic or international). Therefore, the surcharge that you pass on must be specific for the combination of brand, funding source, currency, and country.
The surcharge fee can be a fixed amount for each transaction, a percentage of the sum of the purchase amount and the tip, or both.

Before you begin, to check the current surcharge configuration make a GET request to the /terminalSettings endpoint for the company account, merchant account, store or terminal, and check the surcharge object.

To configure surcharges:

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

    Brand Funding source Country Currency Percentage Amount
    eftpos AUD (none) AUD 0.10
    Mastercard Credit AUD 1.2 % AUD 1
    Mastercard Debit AUD 0.58 % (none)
    Visa Credit or Debit AU, NZ AUD 0.63 % (none)
    Visa Credit or Debit AUD 1.63 % (none)
    American Express Credit AUD 1.5 % AUD 1.2

    Specifying the country field inside the configurations object applies the surcharge settings only to payment methods issued in that country. If not specified, the surcharge applies to all payment methods that meet the rest of the conditions.

  2. 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 terminal.
    configurations Array[Object] List of payment methods for which to apply surcharges with the details per payment method.
    The order of different surcharge objects inside the configurations array impacts the order of execution. The condition that is met first is executed without checking the rest of the configuration.

    In the configurations object, specify:

    Parameter Required Description
    brand -white_check_mark- A payment method supported for Management API, for example eftpos_australia or mc.
    currencies -white_check_mark- An object with:
    • currency code: 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.
    sources -x- Can be: Credit, Debit. If not specified, the currencies settings apply to all possible funding sources for the brand.
    country -x- The country of issue of the specified payment method. If used, the surcharge settings only apply to the payment method issued in that country.

    The response returns all terminal settings at the level where you made the request.

  3. (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.

If you need help

If you can't 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