How to add surcharges to your credit card transactions | |
Gareth Sales Thursday, February 7, 2013 |
As of January 27, 2013, merchants in the USA are entitled to add a surcharge or ‘checkout fee’ of up to 4% to credit card transactions taking place in their shopping cart.
Practical Ecommerce have covered this topic in detail here, note there are several rules & regulations to be aware of so please ensure you read their post thoroughly.
If after reading you decide you want to add a surcharge to all credit card transaction in your VPASP store, simply follow the below steps to set it up (note Business Ready Plan customers simply need to submit a ticket into the helpdesk and we will set up for you):
- Log into admin and go to Advanced > Software Configuration
- Enter ‘Xpaymenttypes’ in the search box and click Search
- You will see the below screen:
‘xpaymenttypes’ is a list of the payment types you offer in your store and ‘xpaymenttypespercentage’ is comma-delimited list of surcharges in percentage according to the values in xpaymenttypes. For example, to charge 0.5% for Visa, 2% for MasterCard, 4% for American Express, and 2% for PayPal you would enter ‘0.5,2,4,2’ in this field.
Once you have entered your values, ensure ‘xenablesurcharge’ is set to yes and you are set to go.
A word of advice
As mentioned in the Practical Ecommerce article, you need to be cautious about adding credit card surcharges to your transactions. Consumers hate hidden fees and that extra 2-4% could be enough for them to abandon their order. If you do decide to add the surcharge, keep a close on your store and if you find that shopping cart abandonment is increasing, remove the surcharges and perhaps think of other ways to recover your credit card processing fees.
Happy Selling!
VP-ASP Shopping Cart Software
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