thread Re: New 2.4% surcharge? in Online Store

New 2.4% surcharge?

Mini9 — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 21:47:51 GMT

CBC on credit card surcharge
"starting Thursday, merchants must give card providers 30 days' notice of their intent to start charging a fee. They must also make it clear to customers at the time of payment that there's a surcharge, and it can't be more than they pay themselves. Finally, the surcharge will be capped at 2.4 per cent. "

We already have our surcharge before this.

How do we set up or give card providers or Square 30 days' notice to start charging that 2.4% fee?

would the fee show up on the terminal? (we punch in $100, customer gets billed $102.4)?
or we have to manually calculate it? (we punch in $102.4)?

Re: New 2.4% surcharge?

Shoppeandtailor — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 14:54:39 GMT

We are also wondering about this! Does Square count as a credit card company, if they are a 3rd party provider already anyway? How do we let them know?

Re: New 2.4% surcharge?

dglatt — Sun, 09 Oct 2022 17:51:34 GMT

If we charge a surcharge is it taxable (? does HST apply?)

Re: New 2.4% surcharge?

Kassi_ — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 19:20:58 GMT

Hey there, @Mini9 -

Thank you for bringing this to the Community!

Surcharges will differ from service charges when it comes to this. A service charge is an extra fee added to a sale to cover any additional expenses outside the cost of the initial goods being sold, such as bagging fee or delivery fee. Service charges can be a single flat fee or based on a percentage of the total sale amount.

While a surcharge is a fee added to the bill when a buyer pays with a credit card to cover the cost of payment processing fees. This varies from a Convenience Fee, which covers the costs of accepting payment outside of a merchant’s usual channel (e.g. by phone instead of in-store), no matter what payment method is used.

Also with surcharges, Square actually doesn't have a compliant way to apply these for Canadian sellers. There are issues when it comes to the credit network rules we have to abide by for processing.

Please let me know if you have any other questions. Thank you!

Re: New 2.4% surcharge?

CarolR — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 12:23:30 GMT

Hi there, is Square looking into how to solve the surcharge issue? When restaurants are looking at 5% margins, the 2.6% fees are not a small chunk. This is something that should certainly be updated in the system and available to all Square's sellers.