Surcharge For Using Cards

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

I thought it was made illegal to add a surcharge for paying by card several years ago - 2018!

How surprised was I when I went to pay some corporation tax and got a surcharge!

It transpires that there are some exclusions:
"non-commercial cards for which interchange fees are regulated under the Interchange Fee Regulation (IFR); These include the vast majority of cards, including Visa and MasterCard; however, they do not include corporate cards issued to employees for business expenditures such as office equipment and supplies or services;"

So, you can add a surcharge if it is a corporate card. I was paying using a Mettle card - how am I meant to know it is a corporate card? Are all business account debit cards 'corporate'?

Also, how can businesses take advantage of this and, when completing a transaction, identify the payment card as corporate and impose a surcharge (should the business choose to do so - different discussion re the ethics or business sense in doing this).? For Woocommerce & other ecom systems, are there plugins?

Remember, many payment providers charge more to handle corporate card transactions so there is a genuine on-cost that could be recuperated.

 

[David Griffiths]

I think that the nature of the card is shown by the card number, basically the first four digits. That being so you'd need a key to card numbers, and the person completing the transaction (if it is a person) would need to be familiar enough with it to know when a charge is possible.

I do know that card numbers beginning with 2 or 5 are generally Mastercard and beginning with 4 are Visa, but can't go deeper than that. Most importantly, for me, is that I know Amex cards begin with three and as the organisation that I work with doesn't accept Amex that's important.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

You are correct, it is based on the initial card numbers, but general e-commerce systems are not setup to identify this. I am sure it is possible - if HMRC can do it, anyone can!

 

[David Griffiths]

Amazon certainly can. The card linked to my Amazon account is a business card because back in the day I bought far more for the office than personally. They now email me regularly asking if I want a business account with them because I pay on a business debit card.