Surcharging Guide

Surcharging lets you add the card processing fee to the customer's total, passing the cost to the cardholder. This is subject to card network rules and state laws.

Card network rules

• Maximum surcharge: the lesser of your actual processing cost or 3% of the transaction
• Credit only: surcharging is only permitted on credit cards — never on debit cards
• Disclosure required: you must disclose the surcharge amount before the customer completes payment
• Same rate: you cannot charge different surcharge rates for different card brands

Enable surcharging

Surcharging is enabled at the merchant level in the Partner Portal under Merchant Settings → Processing → Surcharging.

When enabled, pass surcharge: true on payment requests. Cresora automatically calculates the surcharge based on the card type and your processing cost:

POST /api/v1/transactions/sale
{
  "amount": "50.00",
  "currency": "USD",
  "payment_method": "card",
  "merchant_id": "mrch_xxxxxxxxxx",
  "surcharge": true
}

The response includes the surcharge breakdown:

{
  "id": "pay_xxxxxxxxxxxx",
  "amount": "50.00",
  "surcharge_amount": 230,
  "total_amount": 10230,
  "surcharge_rate": 0.023
}

Disclosure requirements

Before charging, display the surcharge to the customer:

Subtotal:   $100.00
Surcharge (2.3% — credit card fee): $2.30
Total:      $102.30

Cresora's HPP integration displays this automatically when surcharging is enabled.

Debit card detection

When surcharge: true is set and the card is identified as a debit card, Cresora automatically omits the surcharge. The response will have surcharge_amount: 0 and surcharge_omitted_reason: "debit_card".