Understanding and Enabling Surcharges

Market Pay's Surcharge feature lets merchants automatically apply a fee to transactions made with business cards or non-EEA (international) cards, helping offset the higher processing costs those cards carry. This article explains how the surcharge works, what the cardholder sees, how it is returned to an integrated cash register, and how it is enabled.

What is a surcharge?

A surcharge is a small additional fee applied to a transaction at the point of sale. With the Surcharge Service, the fee is calculated in real time based on the card type detected by the terminal, and is displayed to the cardholder before they confirm the payment — ensuring full transparency.

Warning

Surcharging is illegal in Spain and France. This feature must never be enabled for merchants operating in either of these countries. Merchants are also not permitted to charge more than the fees they pay to the acquirer.

Which cards are eligible?

Surcharges are typically applied to two card categories:

Business cards — for example, Visa Business or Mastercard Business.
Non-EEA cards — international cards issued outside the European Economic Area.

Consumer cards issued within the EEA are generally not surcharged, subject to the pricing policy in force for the merchant.

How the cardholder journey works

The flow below illustrates a complete transaction where a surcharge is triggered by detection of a business or non-EEA card on a PAX terminal in standalone mode. Transparency is key: the cardholder always sees the fee and the reason before confirming.

Step	Stage	What happens
01	Present card	Initial amount shown (e.g. 100.00 €). The customer presents their card and the terminal reads it.
02	Processing	The Surcharge Service detects the card type and computes the fee.
03	Confirmation screen	The updated total (e.g. 101.10 €) and the reason for the fee are displayed. The cardholder can confirm or cancel.
04	PIN entry	If required — standard EMV flow.
05	Authorisation	The transaction is sent for authorisation with the surcharge-inclusive amount.
06	Approved	The total amount, including the surcharge, is displayed and printed.

Note

At the confirmation screen the cardholder always retains the choice to cancel the transaction. The surcharge is never applied silently.

Integration with your cash register (ECR)

When the terminal is integrated with a cash register over the Local API (Nexo Retailer), the surcharge is returned transparently to the ECR — no additional configuration is required on the ECR side. The surcharge amount is populated in the SurchargeAmount field within the AmountsResp object of the PaymentResult.

{
  "PaymentResult": {
    "AmountsResp": {
      "AuthorizedAmount": "11.99",
      "TipAmount": "1.00",
      "SurchargeAmount": "2.00",
      "Currency": "EUR"
    }
  }
}

Field reference

Field	Description	Populated when
`AuthorizedAmount`	Total amount authorised by the acquirer, including all additions (tip, surcharge).	Always
`TipAmount`	Tip amount selected by the cardholder, if the tip feature is enabled.	When a tip was applied
`SurchargeAmount`	Surcharge added by the Surcharge Service based on card-type detection (business / non-EEA).	When a surcharge was applied
`Currency`	ISO 4217 currency code of the transaction.	Always

Warning

Your ECR must be configured to accept an AuthorizedAmount that is higher than the amount originally requested. When a surcharge is active, the difference between the authorised amount and the requested amount equals the SurchargeAmount. ECR systems must not reject a response solely because the authorised amount exceeds the requested amount — this is expected behaviour.

Pricing rules at a glance

Surcharges are calculated as a percentage of the transaction (ad valorem); the fixed-fee component is currently 0.00, so the surcharge is exclusively proportional to the transaction amount. Rates vary by merchant acceptance zone, card scheme, card issuer region, and cardholder type. The default policy uses three rate tiers:

2.50% — reduced rate, for domestic or intra-EEA consumer cards on mainstream schemes.
2.95% — intermediate rate, for intra-EEA business cards on Maestro.
3.95% — standard rate, for INTER (non-EEA) issuer regions, GB cards on premium or alternative schemes, and all Amex/Diners regardless of origin.

Note

Rates can vary by region and card scheme. Always discuss the applicable surcharge policy with your Market Pay sales representative before enabling the feature.

How to enable surcharges

The Surcharge feature is enabled during the merchant onboarding process — there is no self-service activation or rate modification once a merchant is live. Any later change requires a support request.

Enabling a merchant for surcharge involves two coordinated steps:

Create the surcharge policy on the Market Pay Gateway (MPG) side and in SPRING. A standard pricing model is applied by default; if a client requires different pricing, the Sales team agrees the applicable terms first.
Activate the feature in SPRING. In SPRING, check the Surcharges box and select the surcharge policy. The party managing the merchant's onboarding controls which policy applies.

Requirements and constraints:

Surcharging is supported only for Terminal Payments.
The terminal must run PayOnSite app version 4.4.0-d4d3a4391 or later.
The feature is available on PAX payment terminals only. Tap to Pay / SoftPOS is out of scope for the current release.

Reporting and transparency

Every surcharge applied is tracked in the Market Pay Hub. For each affected transaction the record shows the base amount, the surcharge amount, and the final authorised total, so administrators and Market Pay operations teams can reconcile transactions and support merchants easily.