Visa has recently announced changes to their Surcharge rules that will take effect April 15, 2023. As a leader in payments, Global Payments is dedicated to keeping you and your merchants informed on these industry and regulation changes.
Overview – These updates will impact three key areas of surcharge transactions:
- Visa registration is no longer required. Merchants will now only need to notify their acquirers, not Visa, 30 days in advance if they wish to assess surcharges.
- The maximum amount for a credit card surcharge will be lowered from 4% to 3%. This means that merchants with surcharge rates over 3% must be adjusted by April 1, 2023, to be in compliance with the new regulation. This new maximum amount will be included in the Visa Rules going forward. Global Payments is currently reviewing this change and will provide additional information following this communication.
- If your merchant is using third-party software, they will need to work with that provider to ensure the proper fields are populated by the April date.
Please note that Visa plans to continue monitoring the assessment of surcharges and will implement compliance action when violations of the Visa Rules are identified. We will continue to keep you informed of updates, and will provide additional recommendations for compliance in the near future. We will notify merchants of changes via their Merchant Statement once we have more information.
If you have any further questions, please contact IB Sales Support at 800-827-4880, option 4.